StarFall
by njking24
Summary: Eddard Stark rides with his men to the fallen star north of Winterfell. There he finds strange men, with strange ideas, and even stranger machines. How will these people affect the north, or even all of the seven kingdoms?
1. Chapter 1

-Demetrius-

He woke in zero gee. The pull of a world had left him, and in the tight confines of the cold sleep tank he felt gangly and uncoordinated. His limbs felt weak, and the glare of phosphorous leds above his head were bright spears of stabbing light in his corneas.

"Captain Vasquez, please be careful." Quay's voice was pleasant, almost bell like in its accent-less tonality. "Something has happened captain, and it is beyond the scope of my limited functionality to deal with the situation as it is." He couldn't focus on the A.I's voice. The lights were boring into his head.

"Wha…" He coughed his throat was dry, and though he knew the words Quay was saying, knowing them and understanding them was two different things. His thoughts were a foggy blur, as if every idea he had was at the bottom of a frozen lake and though the surface was just there and thin membrane of fogged ice that stopped his thoughts from breaching to the surface.

"Captain Vasquez, this is an emergency situation. Do you consent to Forgo the standard cold sleep reawakening drugs in favor of emergency stimulant complex 9134-C?" Quay's voice was calm. It was always calm. "You may refuse captain, but as per article 103.4.2 refusal shall result in the immediate termination of your contract, and a cessation of rank, duties, and licenses as provided by Sol Union charter 34.2.1 _The Weaponized Human Developments act."_ It paused for a few moments without saying a word.

"Captain Vasquez, do you consent?"

"Y-yes." He uttered. His throat was so dry. "I consent." He felt the cool press of a sterilized needle pushing into the stim port into his left leg. His head cleared, it felt as if that thick fog had been burned away by the searing light of the noonday sun.

"Water, I need water." There was a quiet hiss, and the muted jingle of a bell. He moved his head to his left, and took a sip from the plastic tube near his face. With a heavy sigh, he stood up, the lethargy in his muscles were starting to fade, and as the seconds passed his thoughts came to him faster and faster.

Demetrius sat up in the cold sleep pod, his eyes dry and stinging his hands heavy on the cold carbo-plastic material beneath his fingers. Its blue-black colors reflected a rainbow over the tight narrow curves of its cylindrical shape. He took a few moments to watch the bands of color curl and twist

"Captain Vasquez, it has now been more than three minutes since your awakening, system monitoring indicates mental functions should be at peak performance." Quays voice was quipped and courteous, it always was by design. "We are in an emergency situation captain Vasquez, I have reached the end of the allowable tolerances on my free range of actions and I now need the input of a commanding officer to proceed."

Demetrius shook his head. Focus, he thought, he needed to focus.

"Situation report." He voice was a deep low growl, escaping from the depths of his immense chest.

A three dimensional graph appeared before his eyes. Tran's-planner vectors and quantum sub strings interactions graphs layering together in multiple colors. The output reading of Q.S.G could only be somewhat understood by human onlookers in a third dimensional shape. He looked at the graph, it was more like a massive sphere, its edges wavering and wobbling like a jagged voxel representation of the earth.

Quay rotated it for him, then he watched as the spinning line of purple in the globe dropped, moving from its constants fluctuation into a steep deep decline into the spheroid. That was not supposed to happen. And as suddenly as the line had formed it twisted and took a jagged turn back up rejoining the rest of the sphere.

"There was a fluctuation in the substring mechanisms that control the Q.S.G." The Q.S.G. or Quantum Substring Field Generator was less of an engine, and more a massive atom smasher. It swung heavy metal nucleic atoms together in order to create gravitons. Magnetic fields spun the gravitons in a computed waveform that created a gravitational wave field around the ship. Those gravitational waves moved space around the ship, rather than moving the ship itself allowing faster than light travel. "The gravitational wave field that results from the Q.S.Q, failed. From the failed wave field instability occurred, and now erroneous data is being read by my sensors."

"Erroneous datum?" Suddenly his field of vision was filled with graphs, lines, and vectors. Data structures and reference points.

"Stop!" He groaned. "Stop, Quay. Summarize, keep it to my rated level of physics understanding." He stopped for a moment. "Wake doctor McLaren while you're at it, and whoever she deems appropriate to comb over that data. When they're ready have them meet me in conference room three. " He looked down at his body, it was still in the cold sleep tube. He grunted pulled the drug supplement tubes from access nodes on his legs and chest and stood.

"Are there any emergency actions that need to be taken at this time?" He walked the metal corridors of the cold sleep bay. After a few moments he was free of its location.

The _Grace of the Wind_ was a third gen standardized Sol Union colonization ship. It was meant to take five hundred highly trained and skilled colonist with all the resources it would ever need over interplanetary distances to new worlds. Casting the seeds of humanity through the dark depths of space to new fields in which to lay. It was a large ship, about the size of a small mountain. Two thousand meters in length or so, eight hundred in width it and five hundred in height it took an average of an hour to walk from one end of the ship to another. As a result a small fleet of transport carts ferried people from one area to another as was needed.

One of those carts were waiting for him when he exited the cold sleep bay.

"Captain Vasquez, the summary report is ready." Quay called to him as he dialed captain's quarters into the transport cart.

"Well, go ahead then." He lay back and listened.

"This list is in order of most alarming. Erroneous datum includes, discrepancies with calculated star references, failure in the Quantum Substring Field Generator, spectral analysis discrepancies in the closest star." He frowned as she spoke, his distaste growing steadily. "Data inconsistencies, and reference discrepancies warrant wakening my from cold sleep months ahead of schedule?"

"Of course they do." Quay responded. He sat in silence, listening only to the soft noise of rubber wheels running over the smooth metal surface of the ship's deck. As they approached his room a white box appeared in the corner of his right eye. A voice was heard in his ear before the image of the beautiful appeared in that box.

"Captain."

He smiled, though she wouldn't be able to see it. He had no way to send a video feed to her, though, his implants did let him send sub vocalized audio feed. She was angry yet, even though her face did not show it, the tonality of her voice, and her terse use of his name said it all.

" ." He made his voice sound jovial. "I take it your rest was well?"

"I." She stated tersely, lips smacking together to punctuate her words. "Do not appreciate your jokes captain. It surprises me how a man as yourself can put in charge of this ship with no scientific understanding of how basic systems work." Her golden eyes seemed to glow in the little box in the lower left corner of his vision. He pressed his hands to his forehead and rubbed his the skin there in exhaustion. She'd been this way long before they'd left for Vita-3-c, ever since the Sol Union had declared him as captain rather than her. That had been a year before they even went into cold sleep, and the woman's anger even now seemed incapable of fading.

"I apologize if I don't have quite your expertise on the subject matter of multi-spatial quantum quantum gravitational field theory." He found he dug deeper into her skin by being happy, and so he kept his voice as upbeat as he could. "But that's why I have you as the head of staff on the engineering department." He smiled, though he was sure she couldn't see it.

"So, report." She sighed, her slender brows furrowing in a poor attempt to hide her displeasure with him.

"I think you should awaken the other department heads. I have Quay running the numbers, and trying to simulate what's going to happen. If it's then we'll need to make a decision as what to do from now. Our time is limited. It's alarming what the data is telling us, extremely alarming."

"You can't tell me anything right now?"

She seemed even more annoyed. "Not without being redundant no." A quiet beep sounded and the chat window with her face closed. Demetrius sighed, while they'd been talking the transport cart had stopped before the captain's quarters. He stepped out, walked to the black slate surface and pressed a palm against the door. It chimed and opened for him.

He walked in, and looked around. Little had changed in his eight months of cold sleep, though the room was cleaner than it had been before. It was a little larger than a master's bedroom and a synthetic fabric hammock acted as his bed. He walked to the back of the room, pressed his hands once more against the door, and waited for the hydraulic hiss that would announce the unlocking of his storage bins. They slid out to him, and he pulled his captains garb from the thin metal boxes.

Undressing only took him a few moments. He changed from the drab grey garb of that marked those fresh out of cold sleep, into a sharp black suit. The coat was obsidian and dark, no light reflected off it surface. It buttons were meteoric steel, and on shoulder blades were the twin bodies of the sun and Jupiter. The sun was gold, and etched with intricate detail, an orb with a wide arcing ringlets of plasma reaching out into the black depths of his suite. Jupiter was small in comparison to the majesty of the sun, but its bronze body was partially, intentionally, oxidized to create the illusion of the giant worlds continent sized shifting cloud fields. Around it were shining ringlets of bronze. Both these lay within a jagged circle made of steel asteroids.

He clipped the rank pin to his collar. It was a silver and opal ship, jagged and sharp, its shape as iconic as the image of the North American old west cowboy. The _Reaper Falcon_ was a jagged rough ship, made from necessity and birthed from human ingenuity. It had been in the _Reaper Falcons_ that those early settlers had set out in, first to the asteroid belt, forming homes and miniature biomes in the cores of mountain sized rocks floating in space. Then to the outer worlds, seeding man on little ringlets, and moons, and finally to the last bastion of the solar system past Kuiper belt and into the Oort cloud. Its arrow like shape, it sudden edges and late 21st century stylings were burned into the mind of every human born in the Sol Union.

It was for this reason, that the Sons and Daughters of Sol wore the pin to signify their rank.

He finished buttoning up his coat, buckled his belt, and slid on the dark leather boots of his shoes. When he was done with that, Demetrius left his room, and sat back inside the rolling transport cart. The small vehicle was open to the high ceiling of the ship's hallway, letting bright daylight toned LEDs illuminate the small transport cart. It created a strange play of light as if he was in constant high noon on a bright clear earth day.

He got what he was expecting when he entered conference room three. Five people sat around a black meteorite table, in front of each of them was a steaming cup of coffee, and next to each cup was a blue stim pack. He moved to the head of the table, pulled the plastic roller chair out of the way, and plopped himself into the seat. He could feel their annoyed gazes piercing into him. Better to get things out of the way then.

"Hello again ." Other than him, she was the only one not in the drab grey shawl that was standard cold sleep attire. Catarina spoke up before he could speak again. Her husky voice drawled out in the thick accent of someone born on mars, her speech stilted with the thick Brazilian Portuguese accent of the original settlers.

"Dem." His eyes trailed to her, her legs were crossed on the table. She was pale as as the light from a full moon on a clear earth day. Catarina's red hair shone like burnished copper in the bright lights of the LEDs. "Ame, please cut that bullshit between you and Mari out. Either you fuck, or stop talking to each other." She flicked her fingers in the slow lingering movements of one used to years of light gravity rather than either none, or the full weight of the earth. Her fingers motioned to him, then to and flickered in a motion that seemed to convey disgust. Catarina's eyes were the color of a grass field, speckled with rust and gold. It made her eyes seem to glow almost preternaturally, and it was these eyes that watched both of them.

"Catarina" Mari called out. Her golden eyes were burning with anger. Demetrius sat back, watching with some interest. People seemed to be at their worst after cold sleep, and the effects could take days to wear off, and that was with the best of the drugs.

He took a sip of the coffee, and grabbed the stim pack. He glanced at the label, stim simplex C34-df. He raised an eyebrow. C43-df was strong stuff, an amphetamine grown from gene spliced yeast back on earth. It was meant to be used no more than once every couple days. He slid the stim into his pocket. When he had the chance he'd place it in his room for later use.

Mari was a tall, tall woman. She was born belt side, out where the sun was a bright pinprick against a field of stars and where gravity had no sway. She stood over seven feet tall, with a halo of thick brown black hair in tight curls. As much a sign of her mother's heritage as her caramel skin and golden eyes. Thin fingers, from once thin fragile bones, pointed at the redheaded woman. Then they dropped, and the anger slid from her face. was good at that. Letting the anger go when she wanted, at least temporarily.

"I don't have time for this." She made another hand gesture and a video feed window appeared in Demetrius's vision. It took up the majority of his sight. They were graphs, and three dimensional models of plan substrate. "We are dead in the water." He wondered if she had said that to illicit a response. No one responded, they all knew that speaking up was pointless, and in a few moments she'd explain what she meant.

The graphs became prominent in his vision, the one he was seeing was the fluctuating graph quay had initially given him upon wakening. It stretched out, showing the readings before he'd been awakened, the sections where the normal hills and valleys peaked then flat lined were no longer there. Instead there was a sharp peak, going far higher than any other previous peak in the graph by order of magnitudes before flat lining there. Sometime later after that flat line an entirely new curve began with new peaks and flat lines on a different cure.

"As you can see, about ten hours ago there a severe spike in gravitons from the sensor readings. Shortly after graviton output flat lined, before returning to a new parameter range. At the same time other sensor output data showed a massive spike in radiation, and a slight shift change that shouldn't be possible. We had a change from the ultraviolet normally seen in Q.S.G. transport shift high, return back to the inferred, and go back to normal visual light range. I've had quay crunching the numbers and cross-referencing the data."

"Ahh," The voice was childlike, and Demetrius's eyes shifted to massive form of Tye. The massive head of Informations Systems clouded milk like eyes were moving in rapid shifts. Demetrius took a second to view what the man viewing, and saw dozens of windows of data was being shifted through all at once. "I see. Deadn'e be us, ya?" Tye asked in the twinged accent of the rocks surrounding the Ort.

"Yes" continued. "We should be dead, Doctor Tyliai. The Q.S.G. failed at some point and we collapsed into a singularity."

He chose that moment to speak up. "Were in a black hole?"

"No. We are a black hole, at lease observed from outside the singularity. The problem is we didn't die when the QSG failed and the singularity even occurred. We have no idea what happens when you enter a singularity, technically we're supposed to be atomic base components. We obviously are not. This about the second problem, and why I asked the Captain to call the various department heads here. The main means of propulsion is defunct. The Q.S.G. isn't working. It's collecting gravitons, and that's why we still have shipboard gravity." She stopped for a moment to breath. "But the magnetic fields that let us grab onto quantum substrings and move space around us aren't doing that. It's as if the entirety of the quantum subspace suddenly stopped responding as it should. We still have ion engines, and using them we can get a decent speed going. But nothing even close to the speed of light, let alone faster than light travel."

Catarina spoke up then. His eyes rolled to her lithe form. Her eyes were also distracted with an unseen layers of information. "We'll be lucky to hit one percent of C."

Mari spoke up again. "This brings about our third situation. I wouldn't call it and problem per say, just something we should take into consideration before deciding what we are to do from here on out. Scans show a planet in the habitable zone about seven hundred Astronomical Units from here. The star it orbits is about the size of the earth, and spectral analysis shows the world's blue-green meaning plant life, considerable amounts of plant life to be honest. The simple fact is, we have no way of getting back home, and we are lost. We only have supplies for a year and a half's journey even at reduced crew, and a trip to this world will take us about nine months travel time. For non Q.S.G Travel well need a full crew to maintain the ship's systems. So we have to make our choice now."

Mari stopped for a moment to take a look at Dem. "Well you have to make the decision. You're the captain."

He turned to the only department head who had not yet spoken. Bheke was the head of In ship security and the Chief Officer after him. The woman was also a Daughter of SOL. She was also a stunningly beautiful woman, her skin dark and rich, a sign of her purely west african descent. Her hair was cropped close to her head much like his was, and her form could only be described tight, and fit. Her accent was twinged with the sounds of her native dialect.

"Thiz," She said. "Thiz is good. When should we find 'nother blue-green wrold? Fifty, maybe Hundred light years ifun we lucky. Spent a few thousand years in cold tanks?" She paused and stared at each person. Her words made sense. If they didn't take this they would need to find some other world, or other place to settle. And doing so would mean spending years traveling from to star on ION engines with tightly controlled cold sleep shifts. "Taken' a change twat all life about. I say we'un do it."

Dem stopped for a moment, thought it over, then spoke. "We're a colony ship, if there's a livable world then we should colonize it."

-Eddard-

It was in the woods that he saw them. At first they were a glimmer, a ghost of an image of men moving amongst the trees, the barest hints of an outline of something. He thought his eyes were playing a farce, a falsehood of vision and light that occurred sometimes when the sun cast its rays just right about the forest. Still, he had been ambushed before.

"Who's there, I saw you. Come out and face me like men." His voice traveled through the wood, ringing like a bell against the thick bark of the trees. Men moved from the trees, slid from the shrub, and branches like wraiths. Light itself seemed to flow over their flesh like water over a stream. It was disconcerting.

Five men in total came from the woods. Their faces could not be seen, they wore strange garb. The clothes dyed in shades of green and grey. They had strange contraptions on their heads. A half helm shaped as it were a bowl, with clothes over their mouths. Thier eyes were hidden away behind glass lenses, each one a deep dark green hue. Strange men, Eddard decided.

That they hid their faces did little to win good will with him. Rarely did honest and honorable men need to hide their faces. They moved as a group,with the shortest man at the head. Though, one could not easily call a man who stood at least at six and two short. Each man carried a strange contraption in his hand, though by the way they carried them eddard could tell they were weapons of one sort or another. All less the leader at the head of the troupe.

"Halt." He called as the moved from the wood. They stood before him now. They were all tall men, and broad of shoulders as well. They stopped, but not at his command. The shortest one had held his hand high in a closed fist and the four others had healed at his command like trained dogs.

Though they held no blades, the way they held themselves gave him the impression that the men before him were warriors of sorts.

"Who are you men?" He asked. "What purpose do you have, sliding through the woods like snakes through the grass." The leader stilled and his head tilted to the side. He nodded then spoke in an accent eddard had never heard before.

"U, lord, this place?"

Eddard stared at the men before him,somewhat confounded he spurred his horse closer. "If you are to speak to me," he said. " Let me see your face. Only brigands and men of ill repute hide their faces so."

The man focused on the words. His head was bowed in the effort and Eddard heard a sigh of frustration escaped his lips. He turned to the other four men in his company eyes. They exchanged words in a tongue eddard had never heard before and then, after a moment another of the men stepped forwards. He lay the strange device he held in his hand on the ground. He knelt to the ground.

The man had a satchel on his back. It was designed in a way he'd never seen before. Made of yet more strange fabric with yet stranger leader of the men pulled a piece of rolled parchment from his subordinates back. He pulled several more pieces of parchment from satchel. He laid three in total on the road, and eddard realized they were maps.

The quality of the things was incredible. Intricacies, and details heaped upon one another. It was a map of the north, and even from here he could see it was beyond any map he had seen before. Winterfell and all its towers lay in bird's eye view. Small streams and peasants farms could be see all the way from the neck to the wall. The detail was stunning, the dyes and inks used to make it we're bright and striking. Blue and greens melted with slights hints of red, brown and black. The entirety of The North laid before him. The other map contained a map of the Seven Kingdoms, similarly detailed.

The leader of the men stepped back, and took off his half-helm. Then removed the fabric and the strany colored glass from before his eyes. The man seemed of noble birth for his face was handsome, as far as Eddard could judge such matters. His skin was bronze, his eyes the color of the sky. His hair was cut closely to his head, almost bald, but what he could see of it was dark black against his skin. He smiled at eddard, and straight white teeth gleamed against pink gums. He seemed to be of Dornish stock, as close to it as one could be without being a Dornishman.

"I no speak,I not speak common tongue good. I sorry if rude. You lord, this place?" His gloved hand pointed to the finely detailed map of the North. The man who had kneeled had resumed his place, the satchel on his back. Eddard noticed that now each man had a similar satchel on his back.

"Indeed." He spoke out. "I am Lord Eddard Stark, head of house stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North." The man before him seemed to nod as he spoke. When he finished he smiled.

"We are, _Sol Union_." He started, his speech had lapsed back to that strange language of his as he spoke. "We sky people?" He frowned. "We come from sky. Fall. Great ship break, so we fall. Land here." He pointed to a place some twenty miles from winterfell, just under a day's ride if they stopped to water and feed the horses often. "We fall two fortnights ago. Two fortnights and five days."

Eddard remembered that. The falling star. It had been shortly after dusk when a second sun had blared in the night's sky. Maester Luwin had said "My Lord, the star when it falls, a great explosion shall be heard and the land should shake in the wake of its nights. This has happened before, in the old books they say that each falling star brings with it change. It is rumored,my Lord, that before the Aegon the Conqueror first made landfall from DragonStone that a great star had also fallen some miles in the ocean, from the old island fortress."

They had gathered to watch it fall, and as the sun had set it rose again from the wrong direction. The blaring light had lit all of winterfell in its iridescence, it had punched its way through clouds and shrieked like a dying man as it fell. A great sound had occurred as it had fallen, like thunder yet tenfold louder. This hunting expedition, had in part been because he wanted to see what had happened to the falling star.

"We come to ask help." The man spoke again. "To ask stay. Please lord Eddard Stark." The man had fumbled over eddards name and title. Yet his words seemed earnest. Eddard looked at the five men, then looked about him. He had twelve men in his hunting party, with Jon, and Robb both that made fifteen in total including himself. A day's ride was not so bad, they could rest the horses, and should the need to flee arise they would not have to kill their horses doing so.

"Please follow to ship. Our..." He stopped. Thought hard again. "Yes. Our War Chief ask you to come. To follow we. We give food, water, gold if you follow, maps to." He made an open handed sign and the men each took the satchels off their back. They opened them, and lay their contents on the ground. More maps, detailed. One for each region of the Seven Kingdoms. Gold bars were laid plain before them, dozens of gold bars. "We give you now, if not follow we give. If follow we give and more."

The leader of the men stepped back and Eddard stood. His eyes watched the gold bars, then turned to the men. They were still a few feet burther back from the gold and maps. In the noon-day sun the gold glittered and flickered, yellow light moved across the road like a siren's song. Each one of those bars would be worth hundreds of gold stags.

He made no motion to approach. He had no need for gold, he was a man of honor and if these people had such need, then he would aid in the capacity that he could.

"I will follow you to your... your gold, though I will accept the gift of the maps. Never before have I seen such fine creations, you must have skilled Mappers." A ship that sailed the night skies. These men did not speak the common tongue so well, and he doubted the ship did indeed sail the skies. Though he believed that was the closest to the truth they could manage with such little knowledge of the common tongue. "Do you men have horses?"

They looked confused, and he patted the beast beneath himself. Their eyes rose, and they shook their heads. "No, no." He stated calmly. "No need we run. You follow on." Another pause. "You follow on horse?" He nodded, and smiled upon recalling the word. "You follow on horse, we move fast. You follow fast please."

Eddard looked somewhat confused. Were they claiming to be able to outrun horses, or perhaps they had some other way to move about. Well no need to worry about the subject, he decided. The truth about the matter would appear in time.

He turned to his hunting party and spoke. "We will follow these men to their leader. Be prepared, if this should prove a treason of some sort." He turned to Rob and Jon both and eyed them. "Should we face danger, I expect to too of you to make haste back to Winterfell. You are almost men, but not men quite yet. You should not waste your lives on my foolish curiosity."

The boys nodded and he turned back to face the strange men. They were ready to go. "Lets us depart then." They then started to run, it started as a light jog, that then turned into a full spring. He spurred his horse he was galloping at full speed, yet the men remained were outpacing horses. Eddard stark felt amazed. Men should not be able to keep pace with horses, let alone outpace them. They rode for three hours before Eddard called for them to halt the horses.

The horses and his own riders glistened with sweat, and the breath came off them in great heavy sighs. The men they followed seemed to not be bothered by it at all. While they sweat somewhat, the feat of outpacing horses for three hours hard riding seemed to be no more surprising and startling to them than the act of breathing. They pulled hard steel tubes from their satches and all took long swigs of some drink. As they let the horses graze Eddard watched the men, worry now starting to creep itself along his spine. Strange men indeed.

Jon was the first other than him to speak to the man. His voice called out to them as the strange men stretched and conversed amongst themselves. "Pray tell.." He stopped and stared at the men. "Beg my pardon, I have no note of your titles? What are you?" The men looked at Jon for a moment before turning to their leader, the shortest of the men.

"We, men who fight. Men who fight, for people. For brothers, for sisters, for each other. We fight, we fight for land. For we land. We fight, we protects." The leader said. "We made to fight. We good at it." He nodded then.

"You are soldiers?" Jon said, more of a question then a statement. "Born to fight. So then are you knights?" The leader of the men stopped, and thought it over.

"Not knight. Us _Marines_. I, I _corporal_." He pointed to himself. Flexing the words and enthesising them. He pointed to the men. "They _privates_ , We good. We made to fight." Made to fight. The words echoed. The speech seemed to take a while.

"Corporal." Jon repeated the words. The man wasn't a knight,but seemed to be a warrior of some skill among his people. If Corporal was his proper title, then as such he would be addressed. "How is it you can outpace horses?" That was something of interest.

The Corporal looked at John. His face contorted into a mask of confusion, then realization, and then frustration. "We made to fight, we made strong, we made fast." As if that explained all. John continued. "You were birthed as such?" The corporal looked at Jon once more, confusion. "You have always been able to run as such." The man eyes brightened. "Yes, we birthed. We birthed able to run good. Run fast." He smiled, perfectly straight white teeth beaming.

As Jon spoke to the strange men, Eddard watched. A race of men from the skies, bithed with the ability to outpace horses. His eyes strayed to their strange weapons. Could the kingdom do anything in the face of an army of such men? Perhaps he should call his banners and end a threat before it rose, and a new reign of men took hold of the seven Kingdoms. After all it had taken only three Targaryens and their dragons to bring heel to the seven kingdoms once upon a time. He cast such thoughts aside, until they proved themselves otherwise, he would trust these men.

The horses had grazed and been watered and they once more started to ride. They rode in silence for four or so hours, and eventually the sky started to darken as dusk moved slowly across the land. When the sun had turned red in its descent into the land, Eddard stark finally saw the great ship they had spoke of.

The contraption took his breath away. It was wrought in steel, and rose higher than even the great Sept of Baelor. A great towering beast, its spires seemed to scrape against the sky, going higher and higher as if attempting to touch the gods themselves. As they approached eddard could see men and woman moving across its surface. Great embers birthed from strange tools, flying away much as Eddard had seen embers do during the forging of steel. Other men looked at the strange contraption and pointed.

Rather than going straight the men swung around to the left, moving in a wide arch and going past the sides of the mountain of steel. This took another hour or so, and soon eddard could see more men. Dozens moving about the structure. Strange men. Eddard was reminded himself. He was dealing with strange men. The great ship had a great opening in it, in which men and strange horseless carriages also wrought in steel poured out. Now that eddard had ridden some what around it, he could tell the ship if one could call such a thing a ship was in the shape of an arrow head.

They rode into the great opening in the ship, a mighty steel ramp had been lowered and from it men and strange devices flowed. Eddard rode his horse towards the ramp, following behind the Corporal and his men. Flameless lamps, embedded into the ceiling and walls light the ramp and made the ship seem as if day. Soon they had reached the ramp, and the sun had set behind them. Night had made its across the land, yet before them its effects remained distant. A man stood out before the ramp. He was tall eddard realized.

All the men he saw were tall. None stood any shorter than six feet and most seemed to climb towards seven. Yet the man who approached him was tall, even amongst this race of seeming giants. He stood closer to eight feet than to seven. He was dark of skin, he seemed more a mix of a Summer Islander and a Dornishman than any man eddard had seen before. His eyes were so light brown they were almost golden, yet the smile adorned on his face made them seem as if to glow. His teeth much like the corporals were white, and perfectly straights.

"You are Lord Eddard stark?" His voice was a deep rumble that seemed to crawl its way out of the depths of his throat. He extended his hand, and Eddard stared, somewhat confused as what to do. "I apologize." The man said. A small smile was now parting his lips.

"It is custom to shake a man's hands when greeting new people in our people's lands. I am Demetrius Vasquez, captain of the _Grace of the Wind_ , Son of Sol, and Commander of the Sol Union Colonial Military Force aboard this ship."Eddard shook His hands, they were like steel, and his palms were absolutely massive. Eddard was not a small man, yet before this giant his own hands seemed almost childlike. Behind him, much to Eddards shock an even larger man and a few other individuals were approaching.

Those approaching carried with them the the air of important men, and the way other others aboard the ship gave way to them gave some weight to their opinions of self import. He watched them approach, and soon he saw up close for the first time the women of these people, and some of the worry he had felt ebbed. He knew of no men, or no armies who took with them their wives, or lordly ladies into battle.

The women were beautiful. One was as pale as milk, with hair red orange like flames, and eyes as green as a verdant field. Behind her a maiden of skin more like bronze than flesh. She too was stunning in her beauty. That maid's eyes were golden, and her hair haloed her beautiful face in tight curls. Most starling was her height. She was the only woman he'd ever seen to stand taller than him.

The summer Islander also held beauty in her own way. Her skin was dark, like night Eddard thought, and yet smooth free of any blemish or imperfection. Her lips were lush, and though her hair was cropped close to her head it acted to enhance her beauty rather than detract it, it made her eyes stand out. Her eyes were fierce grey pools, and her body was lithe and tight. She reminded him of the Shadow cats of the Mountains of the Vale he had glimpsed in his childhood.

The women wore no dresses, rather they wore fabric of strange makes, cut and tailored as if to the indecencies of their bodies. It exposed their ample forms, and of all of them the Summer Islander's form was the most ample.

He moved his eyes from the woman to the even larger man behind them. He had imagined no man could stand taller than Sandor Clegane, yet this man did. He stood somewhere between eight and nine feet, though it was closer to nine than Eddard would have liked. He too was as pale as milk, and his eyes were clouded over in blindness. Yet despite he moved with a confidence and surety of self that could not be explained. He had a great beard, large and flowing down his body, so light was it of color it seemed almost silver in the strange light in which he. Despite the great mane of hair beneath the square he sported he was as hairless as a newborn babe. It was this man that spoke first, and much to eddards surprise the man's voice was light, belllike. Almost a child's.

" _We're here Dem. T'was portant ya? Placing te future, sats in orb being used as comun relays_. _Calabin em a bastard dont goten no time to waste."_ He spoke in a strange tongue. Odd and lilting as if he had trouble moving his tongue about in his own mouth. It took him far too long to realize it was the same tongue that the colonel had spoken in, yet tilted and twisted in some way. The large man turned to him and spoke. He found it hard to console the vast size of the man with the soft voice that flowed like honey from his mouth.

"Hello lord Eddard. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Tyliai. These are, Mari Mclaren," He pointed to the giantess of a woman, with bronzed skin and golden eyes. "Catarina Courtai she is our most skilled healer." He continued, his arm swinging to the maid as fair as milk. "And Finally Bheke, second in command of the ship, and a Daughter of Sol. "The dark skinned woman bowed to him and he returned the favor. She was a lady of title amongst these people. They all were, or else why bother introducing them at all.

When he had finished speaking the giant of a man also extended a hand. Eddard shook it, and had stared down at it. It was a scarred, and marred in many jagged cuts. He could not help but be reminded of the iron traps he had sometimes used during hunts as he grasped the man's hands. Yet more strangely those numerous uncountable cuts were nothing in the face of the extra thumb the man seemed to have on his hand. He looked to the other hand. That too had six fingers.

"May I ask, why is it you speak the common tongue much better than your men?" He did his best to keep his eyes away from the strangeness. The leader of these strange people responded. "We sent those men out some three weeks before lord eddard. Our people learn skills fast, and a few farmers around here were more than happy to help us in learning the common tongue. We are a people who learn fast."

He looked around and nodded. "Please Lord Eddard follow us, your men too, it is time for us to eat. A day's ride is not so hard, but i assume it will work up one's appetite. We have means to care for your horses." The man called Demetrius, said and so Eddard did.

-Jon-

He was seeing wonders never before seen by men of Westeros, Jon realized. The ship they were in was not wrought in steel as he had thought, rather it was made of steel. The floor they walked on glistened muted silver like a well honed blade. Above them flameless lanterns cast light downward, each one as bright as the sun and banishing all shadows before them. He focused on the world around him, and did his best to keep his eyes of the women who lead them, and spoke in quiet conversations amongst themselves.

"This seems as if a dream." Rob spoke next to him. Rob's voice was soft, a whisper barely spoken and meant to be unheard. Jon shook his head in agreement. His wonder grew, when suddenly to his left without a sound a man appeared. Jon stared, then looked away. It was uncouth to stare at any man.

A few moments later he saw how the man had accomplished such a feat. Before his eyes, without a sound and with no visible means a steel door, that in and of itself a miracle, slid open and a man exited. He nodded at them, his great form towering over those he saw, and moved away from the group. Jon caught the barest glimpse of a room, and soon it slid close behind the stranger, soundless, noiseless.

"That door, how do you suppose it moves as such." He tried to imagine some means and found his mind lacking. Rob started and after a few moments shook his head. He could think of no means either. A soft voice answered him though, calm and slanted a strange mix between small folk speak and the formal tongue of a high lord. A voice that was also tinged with the lilt of her native tongue.

"There are many small teeth in the top of the door, and the wall within the door lies has within it gears. The gears will grab onto the teeth on top of the door and upon a man's wish the gears will push or pull the door aside." Her hair was so dark brown it was almost black, and it ringed her face in a tight halo. Her skin was bronze and her eyes golden.

It was the maiden, Mari Mclaren. He found it hard to tell her age, though it was obvious she was still in the throes of youth. Her height was something of note, and despite it, she seemed especially graceful in all her movements. "And what pray-tell my lady, powers the gears?" She turned towards him, golden eyes bearing down with intensity he'd never felt before. Then, suddenly, she smiled. Great perfectly straight white teeth gleaming at him.

"Electricity." She said. The word was strange, and the meaning more so. Though to her it seemed to explain all things, and perhaps to her people it did.

"Eee-leck-tricity." He sounded the word out on his own. "If you do not mind me being rude my Lady, what is Eee-leck-tricity." He stumbled over the strange word, and its stranger combination of syllables.

Her soft lips pushed up and her face contorted into what could only be taken as frustration. "Captured lightning, is electricity." She smiled satisfied with her answer, as if the notion of capturing lighting and using it to turn gears simply to open and close doors was no great feat. Perhaps to them it was not.

"Were here." The commander of this ship called. They stood before a great steel wall, it was finely etched with symbols, a work that would have taken a week's time a master smith were they working on a proper blade. Still there no handles on the doors, and the man who Jon fancied to leader of this band of strange people pressed his hand to the door. The noise hit them suddenly.

Before them the sounds of hundreds of voices called out. Jon stared, men laughed and jested. Jovila voices filled with good humor, mixed with sweet smells and the scent of cooking meat filled with strange spices. He saw men and women at tables also made of fine steel, the women were lithe and while he thought the men who had met him strange what he saw in this great hall was strange.

There were tall men, and taller men. Some wore no shirts and on their bare chests great artworks of intricate ink danced and moved like living things. The women were all stunning in their beauty and ranged from mile pale, to as dark as ink. The were comly women, and comelier women. The hall was tilled in black stone, that glittered with yellow glass, and steel, and shone it shone like glass. Up above more of those flameless lamps cast daylight in what would have been a dark hall, burning with smoke and dozens of lanterns.

Some men were broad of shoulders and chest, more akin to bears than anything else. Other were lean, and muscles seemed to be coiled tight over their frames from what he could see of them beneath their skin tight clothing. He saw hair of all colors, gold, silver, red, and brown. Rainbow hair that cast the light away in a spewing flow of colors across the maids hair like a flowing river. Eyes of all colors locked onto them all, and silence fell.

"Take as much as you want from tables over there." Food lay on metal trays steaming and hot, meats and puddings and sauces sent steaming scented trails towards into the air. Grains and other strange things he had no name for. Fruits lay on another table, strawberries long out of season, oranges and apples and other fruits that smelled sweet and looked sweeter. Pastries still lay on another table, cakes and more things he had no name for but that looked sweet and drew his attention from even here.

"There are drinks there." The leader of these strange people said. Then he turned and pointed to a chest made of steel with strange hoses extending from its surface. Men walked to it, and placed cups of steel or some other metal to it. Water and drinks colored much like a rainbow trailed down into the metal cups.

"Lord Eddard, you and your men can eat as much as you wish. Simply grab one of the plates, and cups and eat as much as you wish. After we've all eaten then perchance we can have a discussion?" Lord Eddard nodded.

While he had spoken the lull of the voices of men had returned to the strange great hall. Jon followed to where he had pointed where great plates also made of metal lay. He grabbed one at once, and marveled at its craftsmanship. It was perfectly round, and etched into its edges were words he could not read.

He moved about, grabbing meats, chicken, pork, beef, and other meats he had no name for. He placed strawberries and strange yellow fruit cut into small squares down as well. He grabbed the strange grain mixed with peas, tomatoes, onions, beans, and other stranger things. He grabbed a steel cup, it was hefty in his hand and on its side were the strange word much like that on the plate.

Then John moved to the chest that poured drinks into the coups and choose the one that seemed most popular. It was dark and black, and seemed to bubble within his cup. He took a sip of it, and a mix of sweet delight splashed on his tongue.

He drank it in a few gulps, filled his cup once more, and loom about to find a place to sit. Rob was next to the winterfell men who had accompanied them in this trip.

"Have you tried this drink?" He asked as he sat. He grabbed a knife from one of the bundles on the table, and a fork as well.

"Have you tried mine?" Robb asked, moving his own cup forward. It was clear, but much like the dark liquid Jon had chosen it too bubbled. He took sip, signed and passed his own to Rob. Rob tasted his and smiled.

"It is not water, or wine or beer. It's sweet and cold." Rob said of his own drink. Jon felt much the same though he felt he had no words to describe what he was tasting.

He took a bite of the steak, and juices finely seasoned paired into his mouth. He stared, and in a few minutes was consuming the rest of his plate with rabid attention. Fine spices, rich with salt and fat. He had meals before, good meals, cooked by Gage and the kitchen wenches of winterfell. But this them all to shame.

A man sat by him as he filled himself, and Jon waited a moment to chew and swallow his food before he turned to address the man.

"Colonel?" The man nodded and smiled at Jon. His deep blue dyes seemed to glitter in the strange light, and the grin upon his face spread as Jon had addressed him.

"You remember good. Colonel is title, rank."He said firmly. He pointed to himself. "Name is Jason. Welcome to the _Grace of the Wind._ " He extended his massive hand, and Jon shook it. Jason, He thought, Jason a man of rank amongst these peoples.

"I am Jon Snow." He stated.

"Not stark?" He pointed to Lord Eddard at another table with the men and women who had greeted them at the entrance to this great beast of a ship. Jon felt his face redden as his mood darkened.

"No I am not lord Stark's true born son. Therefore my name is snow, much like many bastards of the north."

"That matters?" The Colonel asked somewhat confused. Jon smiled at the man's ignorance. Of course it mattered. What was a bastard to do? What could he do when he was the very sign of his lord father's shame.

"Yes it does." Jon replied, and the man patted him on the back. His tan face seemed saddened, his blue eyes seemed

"That is shit."The Colonel stared at him, his head shaking in derision. "I have no last name." He held up his hand, and Jon saw nothing. Then, fading from the depths of his skin much like a man in the depths of deep fog, an image slowly appeared. It was a series of bars of various lengths, short and long inked on his skin. "These marks let all men of my country know I am me. No other man has these marks, not other man can ever have these marks. Each man has his own." He smiled. "Some men have last names, I have no need for one, and many like me do not either." The Colonel stared Jon in the eyes. His blue pools seemingly glowing in their intensity. "My people, they do not care about birth. They care for actions, for deeds, those make a man. Those make him a great man." He held up his palm, and the boxes of ink were gone. "The Commander, the Captain, he a great man. He lead us because he's a great man."

He stared. "If you bring shame, what you do, when you man. What then? Stay at father's place? At castle?"

He had thought of this many a times over the past few years. And as the day of his manhood approached the notion of going to the night's watch with his Uncle Benjen seemed even more noble, even more an obvious choice for an unwanted bastard.

"I have thought of going to the Night's Watch." He admitted with some hesitation.

The man patted him on the back. "This thing, this Night's watch? It is a good thing?"

Jon Nodded, and the man smiled. "Then you go join. But if you not want join, if you make change mind, come here." He tapped himself, pounding his chest with his massive arms. "We need good men. You make good man. We pay good, we make you strong, fast."

Fast. That piqued his interest. He'd seen many wonders since meeting the men in the woods earlier this morning. Flameless lanterns, and horseless carriages. Strange fruits and meats, and stranger drinks. But the most amazing had been seeing those men outpace galloping horses.

"You...you can teach me how to do what you did?" The colonel nodded enthusiastically.

"Yes. We teach, we make you good soldier. Strong, fast."

Fast, he thought again. He was a bastard, and the greatest thing he had aspired to do with his life was join the Night's Watch. But these men offered something different. A choice he had never had before. That in and of itself made the offer worth thinking over.

-Eddard-

Eddard sat in a chair made of leather and soft as womans hands. It seemed to fit his form as if made for him and him alone. The man who lead these people, the Commander of this craft stared at him behind impassive golden eyes. A cup of hot bitter drink sat before both of them, on a table finely crafted or ornately carved glistening steel. The man drank from his often before his spoke.

"You should drink some lord Eddard, it is much like your tea, though far more bitter. It is sweetened, and I oft find the two tastes compliment each other well." The man's deep rumbling voice spoke. Eddard took a taste a the drink, it was hot, and far more bitter than tea, yet at the same time it was sweet. A strange people, eddard thought once more, with foods and strange customs.

"Lord Eddard, I apologize for the way my men approached you. I had sent them out to range the area, to see if anything of note could be found. We found a farmer and asked him of this land, and tried to learn what we could of your tongue from him. It was only by chance that we found you. My soldiers had been in the forest for a few days when you spotted them, had you not they would have returned and we would have waited a few more days and approached you officially on your return from your hunt."

Eddard found himself lacking a proper term for the man. The cut of his garments, the strangeness of the fabric and the wealth this ship seemed to show with such grandiose excess implied that the man was a lord. Someone of wealth, and worth, and power. There was more steel here than Eddard had ever seen, and the man had been willing to give away thousands of gold dragons in order to speak to him. The ornate pins he wore upon his chest and the flap of a shoulder would be worth hundreds of gold dragons by themselves.

"You're men stalked my own through the wolfswood for some time before they showed themselves." True men had no need to hide themselves behind tricks and deceptions, to sneak through the woods like women.

"They were ordered to observe, and only interact if they had been discovered lord Eddard. If it gave you offense, I apologize."

He was quiet for a moment before he spoke. Then he nodded his acceptance. The apology seemed earnest.

"Lord Eddard, I shall be forthwith with you. I am not a man who is skilled with words, and I have discovered it is most useful to be forward with those I find myself dealing with. My people wish to stay on you lands lord Eddard." Demetrius stopped to take a sip of the dark bitter drink he had offered Eddard, then he continued to speak.

"We do not assume stay for free. We can pay for the privilege, we have some gold, and silver as well though no great worth of it. Diamonds we have aplenty if you wish for those as well. What we truly have lord Eddard is knowledge. Knowledge of steel craft, and metallurgy. Healing arts and map making. We have seeds fruits and grains that will flourish in this land, and other seeds that you grow now that will grow in half the time and have twice their normal yields."

Eddard listened with growing interest to the man's words. He had seen many things since coming aboard the steel craft, wondrous things that had seemed magical. But as he looked he came to understand it was not magic. It was craftsmanship. Ornate craftsmanship.

Wheels, within wheels, within wheels. As a boy, in the Vale of the Eerie when he had still been hosted by John Aryan, a man; A smith who built great intricate machines had come to show his newest invention. It was a geared map of westeros, with all the great houses and castles unfolding and folding again as a their house animals marched around them in an intricate arcing dance. It had stunned as a youth, how all the parts moved in arcs, wheels within wheels, within wheels.

This place, this craft that sailed the sky like a great ship sailed the seas was like that. Complicated, wheels within wheels, within an ever increasing number of wheels. They were not a race of wizards, but craftsman; beyond skill and knowledge of anything seen in the seven kingdoms, yes but still craftsman. Warrior craftsmen. The thought almost made him laugh.

The man was not a lord, but he was man of note,and Eddard would address him with courtesy.

"Ser, I was told that this craft sails the night skies like a great ship sails the seas. Yet I see no great, no sails. Can this craft not leave, why would you need to stay in the north at all, if the beauty of the night sky is right at your sky."

Demetrius laughed, a smile playing on his lips. "It would be hard to explain Lord Eddard. Our ship is cannot fly." As he spoke he reached into a drawer beneath his desk and pulled a crystal cube from it. It was beautiful, glass as clear as water and hued blue as the day sky. Both gold and silver lines were marred into its surface, as if the glass had been poured then more layer atop it. Demetrius raced a finger along its top edge and a blue light appeared before his vision.

Wheels within wheels Eddard thought. "Tis hard to explain in your tongue Lord Eddard. How is a man who has never seen steel before, never seen it crafted or forged, a man who only knows bronze to understand steel." Demetrius spoke. "Your people are like this Lord Eddard. How am to explain to you the working of things you don't even have knowledge of. Of the things you do not know you do not have knowledge of." The blue light flickered and a great rock appeared before his eyes, a craft shaped as if an arrow-head in a sea of indomitable black. It sat amongst a sea of rocks, mountains floating free in a black sea, behind them stars beamed with an impetious brightness. A ship meant to sail the night skies, floating aloft a sea of tumbling mountains.

His voice was calm, serious. Eddard studied the ship, it was the one he was on, crafted and carved a thing of beauty and grace despite its monstrous size. "The machines that allow our ship to move broke, and we had to land with haste." He pointed to the ship. "Our ship is not meant to leave a world lord Eddard. It is no simple thing, and once it has fallen it shall not rise ever again. It is too large lord Eddard. Much like a ship that must be built at sea, and cannot be returned once is has landed this ship cannot return to land. We are stuck here. I ask your permission to stay in this land for my people have seen it is beautiful."

Eddard stark's eyes focused on the man. "And if I say no? Ser, what then?"

"We have made plans for that. We shall cut our ship apart and use it to move further north, beyond this ice wall of yours. To where few men will lay to make claim to the lands. It will be hard, but my people have knowledge of hard time." Demetrius took another sip of his drink. "Yet, Lord Eddard, I ask that you consider giving us land, and allowing us to stay. We can offer gold, and knowledge. Knowledge beyond comprehension. My people spent of their time placing all their knowledge within our ships. All we ask is a piece of land we may as we see fit, and where our laws will be allowed so that we may live as we always have."

Eddard did not answer. Wheels within wheels he thought. To cut a great structure as this apart and move it. The notion seemed insane, and yet the man seemed ready, confident even in his ability to do so. A race of men who flew through the skies on the backs of great ships the size of mountains. Fine foods and flameless lanterns and skill of steelwork any master smith with be jealous off. He gripped the soft leather beneath him. A chair such as this would be worth a king's ransom.

"I shall allow you stay, Ser. Let us discuss terms."

-Demetrius-

They were beneath a steel sky. Its ashen grey light made the chilling winds of the north that raced its way across his tall frame seem even colder. He watched men tote crates towards the waiting transport rover; it sat squat on its big wheels and massive steel frame. A wide gated trailer splayed open, and men placed crates of gold, and goods on it edifice.

"You actually agreed to that contract?." The husky voice of Catarina whispered next to him. He gave a quick glance, then stopped and gave her another once over. She wore a dress spun from nano-filimer wave, dark grey and glistening in the sun. It hugged her form tightly, a distracting image that almost drew away from the scowl on her face.

"Of course." Demetrius face was calm. "We discussed this. We are not conquistadors of so many centuries ago on earth. We are not men coming to kill the primitive savages with our guns and steel armor."

"That is not what i meant." She snarled. "One hundred thousand gold dragons, or it equivalent." He voice was tight with anger, and her rage palpable. The wounds and words of old earth still held sway hundreds of years after mankind had left that blue-green world. "Five hundred pounds in gold bars." Her beautiful face was marred in rage. "We are not in the belts, or the rings of the gas worlds where gold and other metals are as common as grains of sand on a beach. Gold is worth something more than just printer material here. It was to the base of our economy when we landed on Vita-3-c. We cannot simply piss it away even if we have no need for it in such a way."

"I think the terms were fair." He felt the need to defend himself. "They are a feudal society, and bloodlines and a man's honor play much into deals. We got a good deal in my mind. A hundred lease of the land around us, ten miles to the north and south. Fifteen to the east and west outside of winterfell. Mining rights, with taxes from profits to be paid to lord eddard."

Catarina laughed. "Profits, not net?" Many people played multifaceted roles onboard the ship. As the medical director she also a deep understanding of economic and technological matters.

"Farming rights, and trade rights. One hundred thousand dragons is small in comparison to that. We gave gifts as well of course." He told her. The men were almost done, and soon, the sun would rise and they would make their march to Winterfell. "Solar powered led lights, and one of these transport rovers won't be coming home with us. A paved road from here to Winterfell and the Kings Road." His rushed through the second to last part. Thought he fire in her eyes told she hat not missed it. 

"Do not," She sighed. "Try and bury the lead. Does Mari know you're giving away one of her precious transport rovers?"

He chose not to dignify her question with an answer. She continued. "So, she does not know." The tilt of her accent was growing was about to lapse into accented Martian Standard portuguese. "Ela vai te matar." Catarina's laugh was in parts mocking, and in parts sympathy.

"She won't kill me. She can't." His eyes strolled from her to the massive form of Tyliai. The pale giant moved in slow graceful slides, his cloudy milk eyes staring as a small grin played upon his face. He wore the dark blue bodysuit of the technical departments division head. Around his neck were the twin canisters of steel and carbon weave headphones.

"This'un gun'd weather. Cold 'n froze like home." His child like voice was filled with delight. "Minds me of the tunnels tween habitats. When un had to climb razor rocks to move place to place. Made a man strong" He looked down at his hands, where the scars of decades old cuts marred his fingers. "The grav though. I could do wit no grav. Even Un' I body made for it, not easy on the soul, so to say. Me un slow, heavy." The word left the gainst mouth in a slow heavy drawl.

"I like the gravity, it's about point eight earth standard. Lighter than ship board by point four gees." They turned to head Mari McLaren walking towards the lot of them. Her own attractive form visible in a long flowing gown, cut off just at the ankles, as grey and flowing as Catarina's own.

"Captain Vasquez," She acknowledged. "Good morning." Mari's bell like voice called to the rest of them. "Bheke told me she would be here a few minutes later than scheduled. She seems to believe we shouldn't go in without personal arms."

"Ahh," Demetrius said. "Well I could see how such could be useful."

"Yes," stated Mari. Her voice was curt, it was always curt when speaking to Captain Vasquez. "Not all of us are fortunate enough to be human weapons." She stopped for a moment, and stared at the giant of a man that was all of their friend. Her face darkened. "I'm sorry if i offended you Tyliai."

The giant laughed, and waved his hand to pass off her faux pas. "No offense meant, and so none was taken."

"I am not sure you're aware of this, but being a woman in a feudal society is not exactly pleasant." Mari continued on. The sounds of echoing footsteps stopped her from saying more

Bheke was walking onto the metal storage bay ramp. She wore carbon composite armor, body tight it fit almost like a second skin to her form. Black like much like captain Vasquez, it reflected no light. Plates of nano weave covered her abdomen, her arms, and her legs. On her shoulder, painted in gold was the _Viper Viper Falcon_ that marked her as a Daughter of Sol.

She held a weapons case in her hands, and placed it on the ground. Her palm rested on the top, and the light beep of biometrics acceptance was heard, and then followed by the thick clunk of releasing tungsten latches. It opened up, and she pulled too light armament pistols from the case, and three pairs of magazines. They lay next to double latched holsters.

"These bein' for the two of you who can't protect yourselfs. Wallsten P twenty three standard. Three mags types. Ceramic composite rounds, tungsten composite, and em nasty old fashion boyo's from em twenty second century days." She picked up first a magazine with a light green ring, another with a light blue, and lastly a dark black one. "Bioorganic Explosive rounds. Any em' try and takein' your virtue' that'll be a last thing em'a doing."

Demetrius watched as she handed them off to both , and Catarina. The women were huddled together, having a conversation as Bheke tuned the pistols to the women's biometrics. He turned as he heard footsteps approach.

"Lord Eddard." He called out in greeting, extending his hand out of habit. The man took it and shook it evenly.

"Lord Vasquez, are your men ready?" Demetrius took a look about, and nodded. Bheke was done, and around both , and Catarina's waist was a gun holster. Next to each holster were three small squat magazine, each trimmed with a different color. He looked at Bheke and she nodded, an answer to his unasked question.

"Yes, Lord Eddard we are." Once more Demetrius looked at the men around him. He spoke loudly so even Lord Eddards men would hear what he was saying. "We head out now!" He shouted, his deep voice rolling across the vast cavern of the storage bays ramps.

 **-Authors note-**

 **This chapter ends here. I hope i got at least some people interested in this. I'll expand on things that might confuse people. I'm not going to explain everything that i say in the story in the authors note. I believe in show the user, not telling them. That's what makes the A.S.O.I.A.F. series so good, G.R.R.M shows us rather than telling us. I'm a thousand years from being a good a writer as him, but I can at least try and aspire to what he can do.**

 **-The weaponized human development act**

 **-Sol Union authorities found that with the expansion of technological and biological augments it was difficult to control what people did to themselves in order to augment their looks, and and their bodies. What could be defined as human become harder and harder as people performed more radical changes to their bodies, genes, and minds. And so the weaponized human development act was formed. All augments not classified as weapon based were legalized, and strict definitions for augments classes were formed. Weapons based arguments were further classified and ranked. Research and development in military classes weapons based augments were banned by all those not licensed by the Sol Union. Those found knowingly carrying military classed weapons based augments would be classified a non human entity and summary terminated.**


	2. Chapter 2

-Jon-

No sound could be heard other than the light clop of feet and of horses hooves on the ground. His Lord Fathers men had uttered only a few words since they had left the metal contraption and the strange men who were its creators had said even less. Jon oft spoke little, and he, as such was used to long stretches of silence. But this was was a silence he wished could be broken. Each thing he had seen the night before had been more wondrous than the last and the man of _Grace of the Wind_ had taken it for granted. Even the beds, the strange metal cots with what had seemed to be hard hay bedding had been...he had no word for what they had been. Only for what they had not been. They had not been hard as hay, nay, they were soft, and laying in them was as if it was made for his body and his body alone. He had lain in them tired from the days ride, and the feast he had eaten, with the words of Commander Jason in his ears.

"If you change mind, you come here." Tangled and muddled as it was, it was intriguing. He wanted to speak more to the man, and yet...He looked back at the man as he jogged, keeping a easy pace with both the horses, and those strange, silent, steel clad carriages. They had been riding from before sunrise, and now the sun was high overhead and soon the mark of noon with its blistering heat would be bearing down upon them.

They stopped to water and feed the horses at small stream after another hours ride. Jon took the moment to approach the Commander, he was eating something. A biscuit wrapped in a silver substance. Commander Jason and all his men were eating one, no they were eating more than one as he approached. He wore the same garb as yesterday, with the same yellow glass before his eyes and the cloth around his neck. The half helm lay next to him.

"Aye, Jon Snow." The large man patted the soft grass beneath his feet. "Sit, sit." Jon obeyed without a word. "I hope our beds were to your liking. It's the best we could do with we had. The printers do a good enough job at making metal and gadgets, but fuck if those beds they spit out aren't shite to sleep on."

Jon had to take a moment to stare. He was speaking common, he was speaking common well. As if he had spoken it all his life. The accent was somewhere between a high born lord, and a lowly commoner, as if the two had been mixed and blended together. He ignored the quip about the bed though. That bed had been by far the best bed Jon had ever slept on, likely the best bed he would ever sleep on.

"You can speak the common tongue better?" He could not hide the wonder in his voice, and the man laughed.

"Aye," He tapped Jon in the temple. "Our beds are more than just beds. They teach and they learn, we had a farmer, an old man of small fold stock, who didn't even know his letters teaching us to speak. One old farmer. Then you came, fifteen of you, three highborn. When you slept Jon snow we learned you're tongue." The Commander tapped him in the temple again. "Right from your dreams."

Jon had no words to say. He felt, he did not know how he felt. Most nights he could not remember his dreams, and yet the notion that someone, anyone was spying on them, prying into his mind without his knowledge. It unsettled him. He jumped when a great palm landed on his back.

"Don't worry, we can't read your thoughts." Jason said, as if doing that very same thing. "And it's not magic." He got close and whispered into Jon's ears. "Just very fancy machines." He laughed, and pulled another one of the biscuits out of the pack all of them carried on their backs. He tossed it to Jon.

It was covered in a strange silver substance. He peered at it, turning it in his hands. He couldn't read the words, but despite its small size it seemed dense. "You open it like this." Commander Jason called. His fingers grabbed on one size, snapped it left and right in his palms then splayed it open, then ripped it open with his nails. He saw steam rise from the biscuit. Hot as if just pulled from the over. Jon stared at it, in parts surprised.

"Eat it." the man called. "It won't bite back. Might not taste as good as it looks though." He took a bite of it, and soft sweetness and the taste of strawberries flooded his mouth. It was good, as good as anything he'd ever eaten in Winterfell.

"It's good." He proclaimed, and started to swallow more of it. The man nodded. He felt full as he finished one, and watched as the man pulled another of the biscuits from his pack and swallowed it down. "It's barely passable as food. Tastes like shite on my tongue."

"But it should keep you full for a day or two." The commander said as he put down another two before he stood letting out a great groan. His bones sounded like wood splintering under too much stress as it popped and cracked. He passed a silver sealed container to Jon and Jon drank it down. It tasted sweet, and like oranges. Despite riding in warm weather all day, the drink was still cold, as if pulled from the depths of Winterfell's wine cellars just moments ago. "And that should give you enough energy to last the rest of the day."

He made to pass to the container back, but the man waved him off. "Keep the _thermos_ " He gruffed. So that was the name of the strange silver container. _Thermos._ "One less thing weighing me down, it'll keep your drinks cold or hot depending on what you put in there for a day or so." Jon stared and nodded.

He opened his mouth to speak but found himself lacking the words. "I have been thinking, about what you said last night."

"Have you?" Commander Jason said. His voice was a deep rumble in his chest. "And what have you been thinking about, Jon Snow?"

"What would I be doing, if I were to become...become..." The man had said the word yesterday, he thought as hard as he could about the proper word. "If I were to become a marine." That was the proper word. "What exactly would I be doing?"

"Protecting people. Our people at least." He stated. He had placed the half held back upon his head. "Protecting the roads, our lands, and doing missions that are seen as necessary by the captain. If there is war, we march to war. The Marines is not about doing, it is about skill. Discipline. Order." He bent down and picked up his strange weapon. "It is about family, when you join the Marines you're a brother." He had it in his hands, and the strap for it around his shoulders.

"We move out in five." A soft voice called. He turned to see the dark skinned maid walking towards them. Her black armor, for what else could her clothing be with those strange pads, reflected no light. The woman strode with a confidence of self and grace that seemed almost unnatural. He watched Commander Jason snap into a formal stance as she spoke, his back was straight, his eyes had hardened and his hand slapping hard against his half helm. He looked around and all the men had done the same.

"At ease." Her voice was sultry, a mix between a bell and a low growl a dog, or perhaps wolf would release. The men relaxed and she eyed each of. She had slate grey eyes, like a storm approaching and casting the clear blue of sunny day away. "Commander Jason, how are you?"

"Chief Officer, Mam." Jon had never heard that word before. Commander Jason continued to speak in common tongue, and for that Jon was grateful. "I am well, I was simply having a conversation with Lord Eddard's son. He seemed interested in what we do as Marines."

"Was he, well?" She turned and eyed him. She stood taller than him, most of these strange people did. Yet her height was not so great, she stood at just about six feet, with Commander Jason just barely taller than her. Still, seated she seemed to tower over him, and her grey eyes seemed to burn their way into his soul. She quirked a thin eyebrow, and then smiled. Her perfectly straight all too white teeth gleamed against her dark skin, and pink gums. She said nothing turning rather to her men. For they were her men. Watching them he saw they did not fear her, rather they respected her.

"I'm sure you will tell him all about the Marines." Storm cloud eyes were scanning looking for something. "Be sure to leave nothing behind." Her voice called out again. "Just because we're _planet side_ , does not mean _sanitary_ ," more words Jon realized he didn't know. Words in their tongue to describe things they could not with his. He focused back on what she was saying. In his thoughts, he had lost some part of the conversation.

"Be sure to leave nothing behind. Those _wrappers_ can be _recycled._ " Another word he didn't understand. Though by context, he garnered the word for the silver substance wrappers.

"Of course mam." She walked off, and as commander Jason spoke. Jon watched her leave, his eyes indecently following her form. "God," the commander whispered after she was some feet distant from them. She was speaking to the other leaders of her group. "God." He seemed stunned into silence, and Jon could see a want of her in his eyes.

He agreed with the Commander. "She is comely." He stopped and stared back at her. "A woman leads you?" The idea of it was strange to him. A woman leading a troupe of men. A woman being a warrior. He would have laughed, but the deference they had given her stayed him.

"Aye. I told you yesterday. We do not care for a man birth. Only what he can do. We do not care for a woman's ethers. Do not see the Chief Officer as just a woman. Do not see any woman amongst our people as just a woman." He pointed to his leaders, his eyes distant. "Without a doubt, do not see them as just women. The Chief Officer could kill your father, your brother, and all his men with her bare hands. She is not just a woman. She is a _Daughter of Sol_."The words had flowed in his native tongue.

As if realizing his mistake, he corrected himself. "A Daughter of the Sol. Of the sun." The Commander looked around himself, and started to pick up the remnants of his meal. Stuffing the silver wrapper back into the pack.

"What does that mean?" Jon said. "To be a Daughter of Sol?" The captain looked around him, picked up Jon's own silver wrapper and placed it back into his own pack, the man was smiling. He had tried to say the word in the man's tongue and had butchered the phrase. It sounded naught at all like the smooth, almost poetic phrase the man himself had said.

"It means she is deadly. A warrior of unmatched prowess. She could kill me, and you, and everyone named not Director Tyliai, or Captain Vasquez and come away mostly fine. She is death. We were made to be soldiers. She was made to kill and lead men." He left it at that and finished picking up the last of the silver things.

"Surely she is not so deadly. The large one, the giant you call Tyliai, and your captain. I could see. Maybe even the fair Lady Mari. I cannot see a maiden being so." The commander seemed as if argue, then shook his head. Jon feared he had offended the man, but he smiled a small smile at John and spoke.

"You should head back to your horse, we still a few more hours yet before we reach your home."

Jon nodded and did so. But as they rode, he could not help but to turn his eyes back to glance at the dark skinned beauty. She rode atop one of the horseless carriages, her eyes cast at the sky and she crossed over themselves. She seemed at peace. Then, suddenly her head whipped in his direction. Storm cloud eyes stared at him from the recessed depths of a dark face. He felt as if she was seeing into his soul, judging him once more and suddenly he understood what Commander Jason had meant. He felt a chill run down his spine, and he turned away.

-Tyliai-

The open space, the vastness of it made his skin crawl. It was too open, too unending in its emptiness. For a man who had spent the first twenty years of his life in the tight confines, the only saving grace, the only peace he felt at this place at any open place, was the cold. The sweet kiss of the biting air, the chilled winds that rustled its way across his unfeeling skin, the scent of grass and horses and life. Those he focused on, rather than the crushing openness, which reminded him of the black.

He walked, his great legs allowing him to keep pace of the horses and the transport rover. Yet though he walked, he kept the steel headphone clamped firmly on his head and half a mind buried in A.R. The thrum of a low beat was all he hear as his eyes flickered about. Mapping this place, taking note of landmark and things of interest. Places where radio towers would have to go up, places where they could run cable and pipes and lay roads down with the greatest ease. Vast plains that would do well as cropland, or grazing land for gen-enged animals.

He wanted to run, to leap on his massive legs and run free. To run back to the nice enclosing space of the _Grace of The Wind._ But Dem had said he should follow and avoid showing off his capabilities, and while the marines were fast he was so much faster. He had been made to be so much, to be so much stronger, so much smarter. So had Dem, but Dem wasn't a monster. Instead of leaping though, he followed the horses of Lord Eddard Stark with his steady massive gait, occasionally take one giant smooth lope to keep pace.

They had been riding since noon, and the pace was starting to get to him. He wasn't used to long periods of hard exercise, he wasn't built for it. But, he thought, he was doing well as it was. The sun was marching its way further, and further into the horizon. His world was limited in color, Grey and white, blue and ivory and purple. A million shades of blue and thousands of shades of red. Burnt umber and blue white marched down, and the world was shifting from bright blue white into a miasma of purple and red. He saw not in the visible spectrum, but in ultraviolet and infrared. He stopped for a moment to watch a sunset for the first time on a living, life giving world. The others kept walking past, and so he moved just slightly out of the way. He watched the sun set, and the static homology of his vision shift of its own accord. It was a rainbow of reds, purples and blues, streaked with whites and finally a lack of all color, a blackness where his mind could not process x-rays racing across the sky.

"Are you well?" He turned to the voice. It was Lord Eddard's offspring, the boy-man that he had heard called Rob. He seemed concerned, worry marked his face and Ty had to stop the half laugh from coming from his throat. Instead he rolled his fingers, twisting his extra thumb over his pinky in a measure of concentration and focus.

"Aye, little Lord." _Titles, titles, titles._ He thought. He was in a world of titles. He had never had titles, never had a name until Dem had found him, and saved him. "I'm fine. Just watching the sunset. I've never seen one in person till now, it's beautiful." It almost made the vastness of open space worth it.

"Watching... the sunset?" The question lay beneath his words, and Ty laughed. The boy meant no harm, and to the boy he must seem an oddity. An Invalid. All be saw was stumbling blind giant.

"I can see, little Lord. Just because my eyes are clouded, does not mean I am blind. Why at night, I can see far better than any man." That was the truth, it was easy to see at night when the heat of men's bodies burned with their own light. They were falling behind and he could see the piercing gaze of Bheke on his form. The woman was kindly for the most part, almost matronly, but when her anger struck it could be a fierce thing. The sun had fallen, and Winterfell was in visible range. They would be there soon.

"Let's return, back to the troupe." He was about to take off when he heard the young man call out. "Wait, Lord Tyliai." He stopped and turned to the boy. He was a lord now? He almost laughed. Dem was a lord, he was proud, and confident and knew men like he knew himself. Still though he paused.

"Yes, little Lord?" The boy-man bristled, his eyes staring but then he looked away. One of the few gifts of clouded foggy eyes were the fact that the number of people who could gaze were few and far between. "Well? We can't stand here all day. We need to keep pace with the troupe."

"The Lady Catarina..." He paused and turned to eye the Medical Division Head. "How is she in relation to Lord Vasquez? The Lady McLaren looks much like him, yet does not carry his name."

"Aye, the Lady Catarina..." He stopped to think. How to explain the firebrand of a woman. The boy was far too young for her to be interested in him, and had his youth not been concerned, likely far too dim to draw her interest. "No, she and," he had will the smile from his face as he said the words "she and Lord Vasquez are not courting. Nor is he and the Lady McLaren as such involved. The Lady Catarina is much more than she seems. She is the most skilled healer amongst our people, and now that we are here, on your world." He stopped and looked back at the boy-man. The child seemed more interested in the fact that Caterina was not in a relationship than her status as the greatest healer now in the world. He continued on regardless. "Her knowledge is vast, and as such Demetrius has deemed it fit to have come along, such that we can see what diseases afflict you people."

The world had turned all black in his vision, and people were red-blue wraiths. Ghost images with their cores beating flush before his eyes. A notification appeared in his lower left vision, and he rolled his tongue over his front teeth. A message from Bheke. He read it and sighed. She was angry, and he would either start moving now and get back in line or face her wrath later.

"Little Lord, it is time that we go." He was moving again, running. The troupe had managed to get some distance ahead of him, and rob shot by on horse racing to catch up, to be first to enter the halls of Winterfell. He lopped along with the boy, catching up to his horse, then speeding past. Long strides and great massive legs powering him forward, making him move and faster.

Suddenly he was where he had been before, in between the transport rovers and Lord Eddard's riders. He stopped, and could feel eyes bearing down upon him. Bheke had a tight frown on her lips, though from the small smile Dem held he doubted he would get in trouble for such a display.

As they moved slowly towards Winterfell he couldn't help but cast his eyes skyward. The night sky was a rich black, an echo of the radiation of creation, but it was pin pricked by bright white, and deep, deep red. He looked at Catarina, behind her the boy-man rode. His eyes firmly fixed on her form. He laughed, his bell like voice ringing as he did so.

-Catelyn-

The out rider had come as evening had settled over Winterfell, before the sup. Auster Rane one of Ned's men had come riding hard, his horse near death beneath him and the great breathing deep gulping breaths. The man had come riding south, towards the north gate, screaming to speak to her. She had met him at the north gate, the sun overhead lighting Winterfell in colors of umber and red and gold. He was a tall man, pale and lean and hard like most of northern with a wiry beard that gave the man a youthful look despite his some odd twenty and eight years.

"M'Lady." His gruff voice had said. "Lord Eddard bade me ride with haste to you. He brings guests back from the hunt. He wishes to give them guest rights, a feast to commemorate them. He bids you pardon him for the haste, M'Lady." He had heaved the words out through great breaths.

"Guests?" What guests could he have met on a hunt? Even in the North no Lord of any house she knew would be so uncouth as to approach Winterfell in full party unannounced. Rarely did Ned indulge in even something as simple as a hunt. He found it ostentatious. In all the years they had been wed, he had gone on the hunt naught but four, may haps five times. She found herself in parts angered that someone, anyone would impose themselves upon him in one of the few moments that he took for leisure.

"Aye M'Lady." She had looked past him then, towards the falling sun. A few hours to have a feast going.

"Tell me Auster, how long before Lord Eddard arrives with these guests of his? How many men am I to be making a feast for. We can hold no great host of men without the proper time to prepare." His great heaths for breath seemed to have slowed.

"The men who rode with him to go on the hunt M'Lady, and some twenty men otherwise. He bid it be a large feast, as large as can managed in the time, for they are large men." Auster replied. She looked at the man, and had to stifle the sigh that had almost crept from her lips.

Twenty men was not so large a host. They could do it, delay the sup and cook more meals. Gage the cook, and several of the serving women would have to be called upon. It was not too great a task for twenty men, but their stores. No, she would worry over such at a later time.

It was at sunset that the banner men made call. They had spotted her Husband approaching, and so Catelyn had gathered her family to meet Ned and their guests. The sun had fallen by the time she gotten the children dressed to meet their guests. The sounds of approaching horses alerted her that Ned was close, and after a few moment she saw him at the head of the approaching troupe of men.

Then she saw them. Steel clad carriages that shone and reflected the moonlight like a well-honed blade. They rode on strange wide wheels, as black as night and strangely shaped. Two of the carriages hauled wagons behind them, also made of steel open to the sky with numerous crates and boxes stacked atop one another. She stared at them, surprise and worry marring her face.

"Mother." It had been Arya who had spoken. "Mother, those carriages are not hauled by any horses." She had not even realized it. For they were not, her mind had been on the strangeness of the things, their award squat shapes, but now. No horses pulled them, there seemed to be reigns, no way in which to have any horses pull them. They moved upon the earth of their own silent power. Making no noise, just a constant march forward.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity Ned approached. He towered over her astride his horse, and his dark hair and long face seeming longer. Grey eyes peered down at her, and she bowed. "My Lord."

He swung his great form from his horse. Landing on the ground without a sound. "My Lady." He embraced her in a hug, a strange show of affection from her husband in public. Then she felt his whisper in her ear. "All will be explained shortly, Cat."

He let her go and stood back. The Horseless carriages had arrived. They were larger than she had imagined. Standing on wheels that made them ride higher than any horse, and now that they were close she could see they were not clad in steel. But made of it, entirely crafted of steel, workmanship she had never imagined. For it took strange shapes. The carriage door swung open, and light flooded from its ramparts. Bright, clear white light as if daylight captured, and a man stared out.

He stepped from the strange carriage in one smooth movement. He towered over her, and Ned, and every other man she had ever met. He was broad, as thick as a tree in the chest with arms and legs to match. His face was handsome, for he was square of jaw, and gold of eyes. His skin seemed like bronze in the firelight and his hair, what she could see of it was dark and curled around his face.

He wore clothes of strange cut, as dark as night that reflected no light. It was formal, almost simple in its cut. Yet the fabric was of exotic make, for she knew no such clothing that seemed to steal light from around it. He wore a gold pin on the collar of his garment, in the shape of some strange arrowhead. On his shoulders were stranger works of meal. It seemed sewed into his clothes, strange orbs gold and bronze and steel intricately crafted. Then he spoke.

"My Lady Stark. It is a pleasure to meet you." His voice was a low rumble, like thunder in the distance. "I must say, Lord Stark was unfair to you in his praises, for you are far more beautiful than he alluded to." A sweet tongue.

Ned spoke then. "I would like to introduce you My Lady, to Lord Demetrius Vasquez. A stranger to our lands. It was his craft that we saw fall those few fortnight ago."

He bowed to her, a smile playing on his lips. His teeth were perfectly straight and startling white. "It is a pleasure to meet you." That low rumble said again. "I hope you will not take offense if I introduce thee to my fellows? They are men of rank amongst my people." The friendly smile remained plastered on his face as he spoke. She eyed her husband confusion on her face. What, exactly was going on. A star had fallen, more than a month before, was he saying? What was he saying? That these men had fallen with the star? Or that they were the star that had fallen?

"I would be pleased, if you allowed me to introduce my children as well." She spoke in response.

"It would be a pleasure." The giant spoke in response. As if on command a group of three women stepped from the carriages. All were tall; giantesses to match this giant's own height. Yet despite that she could see all were fair of beauty. Two wore garments made of the same strange grey cloth, with each having a belt over the dresses, and strange things, for she had no name for what they were, at their sides. The third wore garments, if you could call any clothing with such an indecent cut garments, of the darker blacker fabric. Light rippled over it, and strange pads covered its arms, its chest and belly.

"The lady Mari McLaren." He pointed to the tallest of the giantesses. She stood at seven feet, taller than even Ned. Yet she was comely, with a oval face, golden eyes much like the man who spoke, and hair cut in a tight halo around her face. Her hair curled in a fashion she had never seen before. He pointed to the second woman next.

"The lady Catarina Courtai." She was another comely maid. For she was a maid. Despite her height, almost six feet, she looked no older than seven and ten. The maids hair was a brighter red than her own, yet flowed no longer than shoulders. She was pale as milk, with bright green eyes that seemed as if a verdant field. Her lips were plush and pink, and her figure was ample.

"And finally, my second in command, the lovely Lady Bheke." It was the dark skinned man, with the clothes that hung tight to her form indecently. She stood at six feet, with skin so dark it seemed as if she would disappear in the night if not for the lanterns. Her hair was cut close to the scalp, but her femininity could not be questioned. Her breasts was ample, and her figure more so. Her lips were flush, and those slate grey eyes seemed to bore in Catelyn's own soul. She could not hold the dark woman's gaze and looked away.

Lord Vasquez looked about, as if confused. He frowned. Then sighed. "Tyliai please, come greet the Lady Stark."

"Aye," A child like voice called out. She was surprised, these people seemed strange, and as such she had not considered that they had brought children along with them. What moved from the shows behind the steel carriage was no child. It was not a man, for she knew no men who could grow so large. He stood between eight and nine feet tall, as pale as milk. He held a great beard, a massive flowing thing that reached down to his oxen like chest. Then the true giant, for now she understood what it felt like to be as a small child, spoke.

"My Lady Stark." His voice was soft, childlike and gentle despite his great massive hulk. "It is my pleasure to meet you. Both your Husband and Son have spoken well of you in the short times we've had acquaintance." She looked at the massive man, and nodded. She finally understood why her husband had insisted on a large despite a small host.

"It is, it is a pleasure to meet all of you." Her voice shook for the first few words of the sentence, and she had to repeat herself to regain her calm. "These are my children." She pointed to each one as she called. "Sansa, Arya, Bran, and my youngest Rickon." The last was fast asleep held in his nursemaid's arms.

Ned nodded. Then he spoke up. "My Lady Wife has had a meal prepared for us. I would invite you to eat with me this night, much as you hosted my men last night." The confusion Catelyn felt grew.

"It would be a pleasure lord Eddard. Please lead the way." Catelyn followed behind wordlessly. The walked through Winterfell. Passing from the North Gate, through the streets. They moved passed the guard halls, and the great keep. Past the training courtyard and finally they were before the great dining halls of Winterfell. She turned and frowned. Those horseless carriages had followed without a sound, moving at a snail's pace unbothered by the mud and muck that oft trapped other carriages and carts that thought to travel through Winterfell.

The man, the leader called Lord Vasquez pulled her husband to the side and had soft quick words with him. Ned nodded, and the man walked away. He moved back to him men and had more words. He spoke loudly, but the tongue he spoke in was strange to her. It twisted and mangled and followed no pattern. It seemed almost a bird song. He returned back to her lord husband, Ned Pointed to the great keep astride the Great Hall. Strange men flowed from the horseless carriages. Thirteen in all and along with Ned's own rides began to unpack the crates, chests and boxes. One man brought a box towards them, and lay it on the ground.

She would have said something about the impropriety of the whole affair, yet she did not. The box was made of a material she'd never seen before. Not metal, and not wood either. He opened the box, and pulled a series of strange glass cubes. He removed four in total each the size of a man's hands. He had more words with her husband, and her Husband nodded his accent. The man rushed into great hall, and Catelyn's eyes watched him go.

"I bid we wait a few moments my lady. What you shall see when you enter shall be surprising. These people seem full of surprises." She waited, and the man returned nodding to her lord husband, and then he turned to his own lord. Ned spoke up. "It is ready, my lady lets enter."

It was daylight in the great halls, yet no lanterns burned. She turned and stared, trying to find the source of the light. It was the glass cubes, one was in each corner of the great hall and they cast their light about the entirety of the room. She found looking at one to be unbearable. Even during the day, with the great lanterns filled with oil and burning she had never seen the hall so bright.

"Magic!" Bran cried. She turned to her son, and saw that his eyes were wide with wonderment. She looked at her Lord Husband and he seemed unaffected So too did the bastard, and Rob, He walked up to one of the glass tubes, the one closest to the entrance of the great hall, serving women stood around agasp in surprise. She moved to deny it then closed her mouth, she had no answer for how such a thing was possible. Catelyn turned to her lord husband. He shook his head, and she knew he had no answer either.

"The lamps capture sunlight, and store it for later use." The voice that spoke was like velvet. Sweet and musical like a bird song. She turned to the source. It was the giantess of a woman, The Lady McLaren. She continued in her quite soft speak, bird song voice. "It is not magic, just a very intricate machine."

The words were spoken with a soft confidence, an assurance of self, Catelyn accepted the answer. She looked back at the lights, wonderment still in her eyes. Yet a new question was on her mind, how did they manage to capture the sunlight? She ignored it, and instead returned to her courtesies.

"Please My Lords, let's sit and eat." And so they did. The serving women brought forth suckling pig roasted over a fire. Meat pies still hot from the oven. Chickens seasoned with salt and rice. Pigeons, and pigeon pie, and wine. Wine aplenty. The strangers sat about the table, and she with her lord husband and their children besides. Their own guardsmen, also strangely garbed sat further down. She let them sit, and eat for time. They ate, quietly, made sounds of delight and praised the, though she had feeling it was perfunctory more than anything else.

She turned her eyes to their guardsmen. They too were tall, all men standing between six and seven feet. They had taken their half helmet off, and she could see though they differed in shade they were all young, and all handsome of face. All of their hair was cut into a tight crop close to their heads, much like the dark skinned woman, the Lady Bheke. Those men ate, and ate. Occasionally they took drinks from silver containers, or bites from strakes biscuits. They jested and joked in their native language. A strange tongue that followed no pattern of any language she knew, musical and lilting. One seemingly made a joke, and all the men laughed. Some men slapped him on the back, and it sounded like leather striking leather.

She turned back to the Lords before here. The leader, Lord Vasquez had a smile on his face, though by the looks the women held the joke had not been one for common company. While she had been busy they had finished eating. Serving women brought about wine, and she took a sip. The strangers declined, instead pulling the same silver containers from a bag provided by one of their men. She raised an eyebrow, and Lord Vasquez responded to her unasked question.

"We mean no insult by turning down your wine my Lady Stark. Alcohol does not suit us well. We or not oft to get in our cups, and without that lure the flavor of wine and its fellows are not so great." She nodded. He reached into the pack and pulled another container, this one also made of a strange substance. He opened it, and slide some her and her children's way. She looked at them. It ranged from dark brown, to black. They were in a range of shapes, circles and squares, some shaped in hearts each lay on a piece of folded paper.

"Sweets from my home, they are often eaten after a good meal. They are, as far as I know, some of the last ones in this world." He took one and handed it to her and her children. Then he handed one to Eddard and his own people. They were smiling in anticipation, and stared at it. "My people call it chocolate," he stated. He popped the entirety of it in his mouth, then the paper as well. "These are quite a delicacy amongst my people. It only grows in a few places, and the rules for growing it are strict. As such it runs for a high price. Both the candy and the paper are edible. They are quite sweet."

She stared at them, unsure what to do. She heard Sansa's cry of surprise, and turned to her eldest daughter. "It's good mother." The girl said. "Really good." Arya said in kind. She took the dark square in her mouth first. It melted in her mouth, and sweet poured over her tongue. It was good, a flavor she had never tasted before, dark and rich. She chewed and swallowed. Then slid the piece of paper into her mouth too. It was thin, and melted on her tongue. It tasted of mint.

"It is good." She stated. It was an understatement, it was very good, delicious, the ghost of its rich flavor had not yet left her mouth, and still she yearned for more. She looked back at them, her interest growing. Strange men, with strange accents, and strange tongues. The man, Lord Vasquez, had retrieved another box from the sack that his guardsmen had brought them, and slide it towards her.

"I am pleased you enjoyed it. I hope you will enjoy these." She moved to deny the gift, but he smiled and pushed it towards her before she could reject. "I must confess my Lady, I am more than fond of them and bought plenty before we left for this journey. It will some time before my people will be able to make more, you see, and in preparation I bought more than I can eat, I fear." He smiled while he spoke, and she nodded. Catelyn eyed his fellows to see if he was perhaps deceiving her, but they seemed as surprised as she felt. Those _chocolates,_ she turned the word over in her head, those _chocolates_ were worth a considerable amount amongst his people. Would she cause offense by turning it down? She took it.

"I thank you." She held the box in her hand. Looked at the man, and smiled. She would bridge the conversation now. She many questions, and despite the feasting of his men, he and his fellows were not indulging. Catelyn noted that his men also did not drink, but they flirted with the serving women, and why not? They were handsome men, tall, and well-muscled.

Catelyn turned her thoughts from Lord Vasquez's men to the man himself. His was young, he looked no older than twenty and two. "Tell me Lord Vasquez, how is it your people arrived in the north."

"Do you remember my lady? I believe it would have been a month and some odd days ago." She nodded. "Lord Eddard tells me you stood outside to watch a star fall at dusk at that time. That was our ship my lady. My people sail the night's skies from world to world." He reached into the pack and pulled a cube, a thing of intricately carved glass. Gold was inlaid into the glass, set within it strange forked gold branches weaved in and out. A steel core was its base, and the gold and glass weaved in and out of it. A tree of steel and gold within a cube of glass It was a beautiful work of craftsmanship, something that would have been worth dozens of silver stags of its own accord.

Then a light appeared above it, bright blue that shifted, and twisted before forming into the image of a bright blue world, it was a map splayed along a world to give the impression of a world. Next to it was another world map, slightly larger the strange one with familiar shapes and continents. She saw The Wall, and The Neck, Fingers and Three Sisters. She saw across the Narrow Sea to the distant lands beyond. She saw other lands, further south then she knew lush and green, the Shadow Lands of Ashia.

"Magic. You're sorcerers!" Arya cried in excitement. Cat had to stop, to pause and rally her thoughts lest her mouth betray. She turned to Eddard, he seemed unbothered by the show, and the smile that lay behind his eyes told that he had expected this response. The Lady McLaren spoke up once more.

"Not sorcery my Lady, a very intricate machine. One that takes great skill to design and make." Her voice was soft and kind, and she smiled at Arya. Catelyn stared at the woman, a question playing on her mind.

"And how does the machine work?" Catelyn asked. Her blue eyes stared waiting for an answer. The woman was important, not just an ornament for one or both of the two massive men that she followed.

The woman paused as if to gather her thoughts, then she spoke. "I apologize, Lady stark, for your tongue has no words for what I am about to describe. I will do my best regardless." Before the woman could speak again, their leader interrupted.

"Later, Mari. Later." The woman seemed about to continue, despite his wishes, yet a quick glance from him and she remained silence. Her face showed no emotion, yet her golden eyes burned with anger and rage. "My Lady," he continued. "The world you see upon your left is your own world, I believe it is called Planetos. Our own world is called _Earth,_ It is the world you see upon your left." The other world was blue, and vast, great stretches of ocean pitted with islands and lands that stretched over its surface. Strangely shaped, most was green, green, green and lush with life. The world turned dark, both worlds. But where her own was night, a billion bright pinpricks spouted in that other place.

"Our people were industrious, and populous and we found ourselves reaching further, and further for the stars, for more space in which to live." Both worlds disappeared and she saw a city, like none she had ever seen. Great towers that scraped against the sky made of glass and steel. Jutting fortresses made of stone, squat and flat and dug into the ground. Great round domes standing upon the sea. Then it leaped out, as if suddenly a great distance away. A steel tower lattice and jutting like the skeleton of man, next to it a great spear of steel stood up to the sky. There were words she could not understand, and then... fire leapt from its belly and zoomed skyward; up, and up, and up it went. It reached past the sky, into a deep black where stars shone like brilliant beads in the sunlight.

"So we went to the heavens, and built our homes there." A third world appeared next to the first too, red and dusky, a plain of all desert, dead and terrible, yet despite this, domes of green spotted the landscape. A dead plain of ash, and grey rock as if scorched of life marked a fourth. And more worlds appeared, icy worlds, cracked and jagged; great mountains floating in that inky black nothingness, spotted with signs of men and buildings. "When we left our home fifty million, million souls encompassed the entirety of our world, and still we longed for more space."

Catelyn saw steel contraptions, shaped like spearheads, drifting through the nights like boats at sea. But where boats used sails to move, these things used fires, and light. They spat from their teals and moved about the black. She saw many, some moved across the great rocks, some above a world of swirling orange clouds made of reds, and oranges. A sky rusting like an unkempt blade. "So we headed out into the true black." Wonders. She was seeing wonders.

"We never meant to come to this world Lady Stark." The man continued. What she saw changed again, a great ship, for she saw now they were ships, of another make, for another purpose but ships none the less. Ships that sailed the night skies, adrift sails afire. The great ship, solid and flat and grey, a mountain made of steel drifting through the night flew. The stars skipped by in a blur as if one was on horseback at full gallop. It flew, and then one of its engines flared, and it waned. Fire licked up and down its back. Its speed lessened, and finally slowed. It crawled through the night, and finally after what seemed an eternity came to a standstill, drifting lower and lower towards a green, verdant world. Towards Planetos. "Our ship broke mid-flight, and we were forced to land. We have no means to return to the skies, the ship is too damaged, and you have not the resources to allow us to repair her, or return her to the night. We asked leave of your Lord Husband to stay within his lands, and he agreed. For that we thank him, and for that we thank you and the entirety of the stark household." The man finished with a smile on his lips, and an earnest openness to his face that she found unarming. She gathered her thoughts, stared at the great beast of a man and the strange device upon the great halls tables.

"You are Star-Men." The word was strange. But then the idea that dragons would aide in the conquest of a kingdom was also strange. Star-Men fallen to the north. She looked down at the box of strange sweets in her hand; at the strange cube of glass that poured light and moving paintings more lifelike that she had ever imagine possible. She opened it, and placed another piece of sweet candy in her mouth. She ate it, and then smiled.

"We assure you my lady, we come in peace, and mean no ill will towards your people.

"Lord Vasquez, it is my pleasure to welcome you and rest of the Star-Men to the north." He smiled another perfect smile. There was raucous laughter, she turned to the left and saw that the Star-Men's soldiers were laughing. She smiled, men from the stars, but men none the less.

-Eddard-

He heaved the great weight of himself off of Catelyn, and let out a great sigh. He lay atop the covers, trying to rid himself of the heat of their copulation. It had been fierce, their love making. A thing of fear, and excitement, and pleasure. Carnal desires base and dear, that he rarely left himself fall into. Tonight though was special, and as such he had let himself fall. They had rutted for hours and now the distant calls of bird songs could be heard, and soon sun would make its way to its proper place in the sky. Today would be tiring. He stood, firm and tall, feeling as much a man as he would ever feel without a blade in his hands.

"Ned." Catelyn sighed as she felt him leave their feather bed. "Ned, tell me about last night." He sighed and leaned back into the warmth. There was no great hearth lit tonight, there was no need for it. One of the flameless lamps the Star-Men had given him acted as light for tonight.

"Their leader is an honest man." He paused. "They could have come as conquerors as the Targaryen's did with their dragons."

"They can't be as dangerous as that. I saw no great weapons..." But she stopped mid speech. Ned had seen those greet flames leaping from the belly of those massive spearheads. Flames that had pushed a tower of steel into the stars. If such a device were turned against an army of men. Aegon the conqueror had used his dragons to make all kings of the seven kingdoms bend the knee. Would the flames from that thing be as hot as dragon-fire?

"You did not see all that there was to see my lady. There were things he did not show, either for your sensibilities, or because he wished to show his people in an honorable light. But he showed me after we spoke the night before. They brought no great weapons with them, but that means little. They have mighty weapons. Devices that can set entire cities ablaze in a pillar of fire and leave the land barren for a hundred generations. Weapons that make a man's armor as useless as a cloth blouse. They could, if they wished to, capture the seven kingdom with ease."

"Surely?"

He frowned and paused to take a deep breath. "We spoke for some time Cat. Their ship..." He paused again. "Their ship is a wonder, their moving images do little justice to show it as such. They could if they wished. But they did not, and for that we should be thankful. They treated with us fairly, and only wish the same be done to them."

"And for what price did they pay for this privilege?" She asked.

Ned stared, and waited a moment. "One hundred thousand gold dragon for a lease of one hundred years, with a tax of two gold dragons for every hundred to make in profit. In exchange they get the area ten miles to the north and south of their landing spot, and fifteen miles to the east and west. They landed Wolfs Woods, on the very border and it and the flat plains twixt here and the wolfs wood."

She was quite in astonishment. "One hundred gold dragons?" He understood her wonder thought. One hundred thousand gold dragons was more than house stark had made in all the long years of their marriage. It was more than most houses made in the entire lifetimes of their lordly rulers.

"Aye my lady, it's worth in gold, and books and gemstones, and gifts. They felt the land was worth far more than it appeared, and paid me as they sought fit." She was quiet for a moment.

"But still, Ned. Those fields will do poor for cropland, the wolfs wood will be poor hunting grounds this time of year; no gold or silver lays in the hills to the north of the Wolfs Wood either. And they found its value at a hundred thousand gold dragons?"

"Aye, they did, and would not take a copper penny less. They dealt fairly, and as such i believe their leader to be an honorable man, some men would claim no knowledge, and pay less. He knew its value to his people, and paid it, and more in spades." He looked out and watched as the sun rose in the morning. It had not yet risen its way past the land, but already its distant heat could be felt.

He heard shouting, and went to the window. Roosters crowed and men were starting to leave their quarters and fill the castle with life, but none were as loud as tall dark woman. They sat in the courtyards, all fifteen of Sky Peoples guardsmen. Their strange arms laid in front of them, and she walked in front of them yelling in demanding tones. They responded in court sharp replies. The dark woman shouted at one man, and Eddard watched as he stood and faced her. He withdrew a knife and dashed at her. She dropped, or leaned, or slid, he was not sure what word to use for the movement for her body seemed simply move out of the blades way. Her leg slid up and lashed him in the face. A round kick that seemed powered from the hips.

The man dropped, dead or unconscious. She frowned, and started yelling again. The men stood, grabbed their packs and arms and slid in a straight line. She yelled and they started to march. She picked up the unconscious man, and slung him like so much hay over her shoulder. Then she yelled again, and began to run, the men ran too, and she followed with a lopping easy pace. He watched her march the men out of Winterfell, and around the castle gates. She followed with ease, a loping grace that made her seem more, and more like the shadow cat she reminded him off.

Eddard turned back cat on the bed. "It's almost time to break our fast. We should go down and greet our guests." They dressed, she in a silk gown of dyed cotton red as blood. He in grey pants and shirt, with a wolf's pelt wrapped around his shoulders.

When they entered the great hall music was being played more skillfully than he had ever imagine, on an instrument he hadn't heard before. The notes were sweet, and sad, the melody slow and thrumming through the great hall. He turned to the side and saw that it was the great pale giant. He towered all other men, and held in instrument in his hands. It was made of wood, glossy and shiny in the false sunlight of their flameless lanterns.

It seemed akin to a harp, but his great hands with their six fingers ran across its body, and its long neck of wood. Its center was hollow, and from it the beautiful sound came. He sat in a chair to the side. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to not be there. He wore a shirt blue shirt without sleeves emboldened upon it in gold were words in the Star-Men's tongue. Thick ropes of muscle could be seen under the shift. Loose fitting pants of grey material hung down to his legs, and he wore leather boots on his feet. He played with his eyes closed. Their children, Sansa and Arya, Bran and Robb, and even Jon watched him with awe on their faces. The notes were sweet, and strange, and his fingers danced and twisted over the surface of the instrument in order to make them.

"You are skilled." His wife called to the giant. His eyes opened, and cloudy milk pools stared out at them. Eddard eyed the man as he placed the instrument down with acute eyes. "What is that instrument called?"

"My people call it the _guitar._ I'm not so skilled at it my Lady, there's still much practice to be had." Eddard watched, his wife had been surprised at his voice, and he understood quite well her feeling. The giant man's soft voice did not fit him, not at all. With his arms now visible Eddard could see that much like his hands, they too were covered in innumerable jagged scars.

"You're so skilled." Sansa cried, and Eddard found himself agreeing with her. "Mother, ask him to stay. They plan to leave tonight, please? Ask him to stay. I want to hear him play more." She stared at the instrument, her eyes longing.

Bran spoke up. A boy of five, not yet deep in his lessons of courtesy he spoke. "How can you play, when you can't see?" The giant took no insult, instead he laughed, a rich sound filled with good humor. "Just because I can't see, does not mean I'm blind." He picked the instrument up again, and played some more. As he began to play again he turned to Sansa. His eyes glittering and wide, a smile upon his face. "I am sad to say-my Lady- that I'll be leaving today, I have duties I have duties I need to attend to back on our ship."

"I think you should stay, Tyliai." The voice was deep and rumbling and Lord Vasquez strolled into the room. The Lord Commander of the Star-Men did not wear the same well-tailored black garment of the previous two times he had met the man. He wore long pants of a similar cut, no he corrected, of the exact same cut as the pale giant. The length and styles were the same, the pockets were the same, and even the fabric was of the same uniformity. A black shirt with long sleeves made it as if he wore no clothing at all. It hung to his form like a second skin. He was well muscled, and was eating one of those biscuits as he entered the room.

"You need to rest. From the time you woke from _cold-sleep_ ," Eddard couldn't follow the word, another of the Star-Men's strange terms. "To now, you've had barely any sleep. I think you should stay, and get to know the people, the culture. If we are to stay here, we should learn their ways." He finished eating the biscuit, pulled a second from his pocket and wolfed it down. "We should get to know our future neighbors, and the young lord and ladies seem to be taken by you."

"I can't stay I need to oversee-" He stopped at a look from his commander. "Are the _sats_ in _geo-sync?_ Yes? Well what else is there to do that's so pressing? We've got more than enough _bandwidth_ for five hundred men." The man turned to Eddard. A smile on his face. It seemed the man was always smiling. Always calm.

"If lord Eddard does not mind hosting you for a few weeks."

"It shall be no concern, Lord Vasquez." He too, could learn more about the Star-Men, and their strange customs.

-Demetrius-

The pre-fabs were being placed as the two remaining transport rovers rolled into the landing area. He kept his eyes focused forward, and had to fight with himself to keep the deep chuckle in the depths of his throat from leaping out. Mari was glaring at him, and her displeasure was his pleasure.

"Come now, My Lady..." She turned to him, her own golden orbs fierce with belter rage. The chuckle became harder to fight.

"Don't you dare!" She snarled. "My lady." She mocked. "You gave away one of my transport carts. You gave away two dozen phosphorous led's. You gave away five hundred pounds in printer material for land only suitable for growing gen-enged potatoes." He smiled at her. She was about to rant.

"The only reason you were given charge of this ship rather than me was because of that." She snarled pointing to the pin on his collar. The mark of his rank, as a Son of Sol. "Son of Sol. You are no better than anyone else on this ship. Just because some A.I. algorithm, gave you that title you-" She stopped and snarled. "You- Ass." She stomped away.

Catarina laughed as she watched the woman go. "You shouldn't have done that. That woman is filled with a _ravia_ redder than Mars. She'll hold this against you." The Martian woman tended to afflict her normal speech with tinges of Portuguese much as one would add salt to a slightly flavorless dish.

"She holds everything against me. What's one more thing?" She'd been like that for the year they'd spent shipboard, and the year before that they'd spent in the ort training. He turned his thoughts towards other things.

"So what are your thoughts?"

"This place, it is a shithole. No proper plumbing or sewage system. No sanitation, half those men had not showered before coming aboard our ship. _Nojento._ Disgusting. I talked to the women when the dinner was finished last night. What they do for their _moons blood_ as they call it is...well..." She spit. "We could become rich selling simple antibiotics. We could spend a lifetime synthesize birth control pills and charge a fortune for them. They have their versions, moon tea, if my translation is accurate. Or blood tea if it isn't." Demetrius nodded.

As he moved about he pulled up a virtual map of the burgeoning town. Engineers were standing by watching trench bots dig and lay pipe for infrastructure, fiber optic cable, thick copper coils for electricity, and sewage lines. The prefab courthouse was being pieced together, a spire of marble, steel and glass being put in place as the center of the town. Roads were being carved into the dirt besides the trenches wide and three landed on each side. Quick-Crete was being poured as the road was carved.

"The number of literate people is literally less than ten percent. At best. Most of them are the landed gentry." She looked around. "Where is the hospital going?" He wanted to sigh, the hospital was going nowhere, and shipboard facilities would suffice for years. As if reading his thoughts.

" _Filho da Puta_." She wasn't angry, but the look in her face said she was about to raise hell about all this. "You put up a fucking courthouse before a hospital?" Her green eyes seemed to glow. "Do not act stupid, I know what augments you have in that body of yours, and in that brain too. Why the hell is a courthouse more important than a hospital?"

He walked around and took a look at a city being birthed. "We'll need to sell goods, make products and trade in order to get ahold of goods we cannot make. There's no plastic in this world, no potatoes, no oil. There's a minor steel industry the lord's use to make their shields. The knowledge of medicine is atrocious. That alone will draw maesters to us. What happens when we have hundreds of more people in the city just to learn? Will we hoard our knowledge can we?" He paused to let her consider his words.

"What happens when a king come to one of your doctors and offers him anything he wishes. Money, women, men, anything as long as he comes to work in their courts. How do we keep them from going, from sharing their knowledge? With that!" He pointed to the rising courthouse. "That is more than just a courthouse, it's a library. People will come and learn there, and they'll knowledge the world over. What happens if, they make the same offer to one of Meri's men?" He paused to take a deep breath. "They won't make better trebuchets, they'll make cannons. They'll make guns. They'll make flamethrowers and tanks, and whatever the hell they can. We got the top one hundred and one engineers in the Sol Union. They'll see the lack of resources as a challenge."

"If we give it away we can control what they get, how they get it. It won't stop the information from getting out, but it will slow down, soften the impact." He sighed, and patted her on the shoulder. "I understand that you're thinking long term, and that's good. But I'm thinking long term too. The hospital is the next thing that's going to be built. That tower will be done by the end of the month, after that we'll start the hospital." He paused running a finger across the bottom of his square jaw. "Maybe even a machine shop, with a higher share of printer materials to cool Mari's temper. The last thing I need is _her_ of all people running away to some king's castle, for gold, and boys."

"And to spite you." Catarina called, amusement in her voice. "Yes, and to spite me. Belters do have fearsome temper, and they can hold onto grudges until the heat death of the sun." He responded. She shook her head. He put that implacable smile back on his face, and walked forward. They had finished the first set of prefab houses, and were laying the foundation for more. The foundation for a future.

 **-Authors note-**

 **This chapter comes out a little faster than i anticipated, i believed stopping at catelyn's perspective would be a good place to leave things. But i felt that didn't wrap things up. That last part characterises my ocs more. Okay. Now onto the less interesting things.**

 **1)Next chapter might come out later than this one. This one was supposed to take a few weeks to come out, but i had a day off, and i finished this because i had nothing to do. Plans got canceled and so i hammered out 10k words.**

 **2)Someone in the comments said-500 people can't win a war. I disagree. Cortez conquered the aztecs with 300 men, a few cannons, and guns. You have no idea how primitive pre-gun societies are, and that was with muzzle loaders. Sure the aztecs didn't have steel, but the Sol-Union colonists have guns that are literally almost a thousand years more advanced than what cortez had. And not everyone in the seven kingdoms has steel armor, infact its a fact that in the seven kingdoms only the wealthy can afford a full set of armor. There's a reason knights are considered a higher social class. So maybe what, 1-5% of the population has steel armor? And that same number knows how to properly use a sword? So what? In the late 19th century the british used maxim guns to subdue the zulu with again a few hundred soldiers.**

 **Hilaire Belloc** **,in his poem"The Modern Traveller" said**

" _ **Whatever happens, we have got**_

 _ **The Maxim gun, and they have not.**_ **"**

 **So, the colonist didn't travel with anything other than pistols, but they can easily print up designs hundred of years more advanced than the maxim gun and decimate any army that may approach them. Horses stopped being used in WWI because machine guns literally chew through calvary. It cuts through them like a hot knife through butter.**

 **3)Dem, is the de facto dictator of colonists. He's called Lord because he is. In the eyes of eddard, he is a lord commander, and the four other are his counselors. Much like the king's council at king's landing, and as such are of course also lords. Because who else would they be other than lords? He'd defacto dictator because he's the ships super user. He's the only one who can override Quays(The ship's A.I.) decisions. If he tells Quay to keep someone locked in their room, they're kept their.**

 **4)Dems is concerned over how the technology will affect the people in this new world. Sudden appearance of technologies usually has short term and long term negative effects on the less developed culture. look up malaysian cargo cults. Dem is a leader for a reason, he thinks long term. And i wanted to show, he's already considering the implication of their people showing up on the world as large**

 **5)Some people asked me where the story take place chronologically. Its about two years before the start of G.O.T.**

 **6)Please read and review. I read every review i get, thanks to all who fav'd and followed'**


	3. Chapter 3

**I finished this chapter months ago, but I dind't want to release it because I realized I wanted this story to go in a completely different directions than its currently going. Then I realized I wanted that story to be its own this and this story to be its on thing. At the bottom I'll have a sample chapter from the two new stories im working on. Let me know what you think.**

-Tyliai-

He was absolutely still as the cold water, like the vast empty rock of his childhood home, ran over his massive form. He lay in the stream, a small river really, and rested. Most people hated the cold but he had been birthed in it, forged in it; and so the icy waters of the mountain fed streams refreshed him. He had spent three days in Winterfell, walking about and asking for baths before he realized that the people of the castle, even the lord and his lady rarely enjoyed baths more than once every few days. The 'small folk' as they were called rarely enjoyed baths more than once a week, if at that. He was used to daily showers, deodorant, and lightly scented accoutrements that had been standard shipboard. Now all he had was a bar of soap provided to him by Dem, and this cold river stream.

He woke every morning at dawn, just before sunrise, and ran, sprinting at the full might of his massive legs towards the small stream that was fed by the mountains north of the Wolfs wood. He would lay in it as he did now, his clothes on a rock waiting to be washed, and his body laying naked in the stream. He would scrub himself and watch the interplay of light. Hues of blues, reds, violet, and grey snaking its way across the sky. The cold and the light show, and the sensation of cleanliness made the five mile trek worth it.

He had thought that the cold, and the speed of his travel, and the distance involved would be enough to keep most anyone from following him. It had for a while, but today was a clear example that those three would no longer insure his privacy anymore. It was still dark enough that tuning his vision to the inferred would not blind him, or steal the light show of sunrise away from him. Had he been able to see in the color spectrum like most people, the shadowed forms of Robb Stark, his half-brother, and Lord Eddard's Ward would have been hard to identify. But in the Ultraviolet Range their fur coats were a drastic difference from that of the trees in the Wolfs Wood. They stood out like a candle in a dark room. In the infrared their body heat betrayed them.

He stood from the flowing water, and walked from the shore. Even if he had wished to pretend they were not there, he could not. He'd seen them and as was his nature he had to acknowledge problems he had seen. He considered people spying on him while he was bathing himself a problem. Once at the shore he slid on his pants, and activated the built in environmental controls. They heated and dried themselves as he turned to face the boys too nosey for their own good. He heard his childlike voice calling out to them.

"Come out." Most people were unsettled by his voice, he was too large a man to have such a high, soft, bell like sound coming from his throat. But he loved his voice,really more than most people would expect. Of all the thing about him; his cloudy milk pale eyes, the scars that covered his entire body, his girth and size that made him tower over everyone even in a world where most men stood at six and a half feet on average... Of all those things his voice was the only one that made him seem, unassuming, unthreatening. Not normal, but not a threat.

They stayed hidden, and he called out again. "Come out. You three can play all the falsehoods you like. Robb, Jon, Theon. I can see you. Now come out." They slid from the woods like kicked dogs, and he would have laughed had they not looked so embarrassed. He wondered what he looked like to them. Giant and huge, as pale as a ghost with clouded eyes that should have left him blind. And the scars? What did the scars that covered his upper torso look like to them?

"Lord Tyliai." Rob said, his eyes were wide, and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "We...we apologize if we interrupted you. Theon saw you leaving from the west gate...and...ummm.." He stumbled through his speech. His embarrassment grew as he spoke. "He thought, that perhaps, you meant Ill."

"He could have been a spy. He leaves before dawn every morning." The youth was lean and dark, and despite his age the signs of his square jaw and handsome features were already showing. But he was still twelve, they were all still just children, and as such were known to embrace fanciful ideas. "And he doesn't return until well after we've broken fast. When he does he spends his time buried in the library tower with Maester Luwin." The boy stares up at him, hard, and suspicious. Unwilling to back down in the face of a giant, but despite that he could see the fear in the boy's eyes. He almost laughed. This was a show of bravado, a way to say to the other children _I am brave. I do not fear the pale giant that haunts Winterfell._

"Theon, do not be rude. Lord Tyliai is not a spy. He is a man of station amongst his people." Jon calls, of all the Stark children he has interacted with over the past month, the most respectful of him was Jon snow. The youth never stared, always spoke softly and with respect. For that he was thankful.

"Yes." Called Eddard Stark's ward. "A man of rank amongst his people. A lord they call him. The pale giant, with the voice of a boy." Tyliai almost laughed, his own voice was still slightly deeper than the Greyjoy boy's own high-pitched speech. "But he has no family name, he's been a month, and spends all his time away from the training yards. Do you even know how to use a blade _my lord?_ Are you even a man, or perhaps you're a eunuch?" The boy had the audacity to laugh in his face. The number of men who had laughed in his face could be counted on his one hand. "Had you been born amongst us you would have been an invalid, with your monstrous six fingers. _"_

"Oh..." He did laugh then, and the dark haired youth's face seemed to bloom. "You are right about some things, and so wrong about many other." He kneeled down. "You act as if you are a man grown. Amongst my people you are a boy, amongst your people too as far as I can tell." He smiled down. This would be fun, in a way it had no right being. "As such, I will not take offense at your words." He stood tall, towering over the boy at his full height of eight foot nine. He knew what he looked like, a monstrous figure. Pale, and scared; milky clouded eyes piercing into people's bodies he towered over the boy. He shouldn't be having fun scaring a little boy, but then again...

"The commander, the one you call Lord Vasquez asked me to learn of your people's way, and to teach you ours. Maester Luwin is aiding me in my quest. I do not know how to use a sword, but that is not why I do not visit the training yard. You do not have a sword that will fit in my hand." He extended the full expanse of his palm, to emphasize his point. "And I am not so good at not killing those I fight." The same hand lashed out and took the blunted sword the boy kept at his waist. It was a blur of movement, a thing of all speed and synth-muscle. Untraceable by the baseline human eye, even more so by those untrained in combat. He twirled the blunted sword in his hand, it might as well have been a large knife, a toy rather than a true blade. "It is a fault, when one gets to be my size. As for my family name? I do not have one, many amongst my people do not have one. There is little need, we know who we are. We know whence we came from. That is all we need." He twisted and buried the blade hilt deep into the earth. It was clear it wouldn't be coming out any time soon.

"If you came to insult me," he said as his eyes turned back to the sky. "Your deed is done, so now you may take your leave." The sun had moved higher and he would still be able to watch the sunrise. He had begun to think of a melody to play on the guitar. A soft tune played in e major to represent the sunrise. He could imagine his fingers playing across the fretboard now. His extra finger had

"Lord Tyliai," Robb Stark stepped forward. "We did not come to insult you, at least..." He turned and glared at Theon. "Jon and I did not come to insult you. We were simply curious. Why do you come here every morning? Is it part of your faith? We know little of your gods."

"I follow no gods." That seemed to startle them.

"No gods?" Robb seemed especially startled at the notion. "My father follows the Old Gods, my mother the New. Even the Iron born follow the Drowned God. You're people have no gods? None?"

He shook his head. "I bathe in the river, because it is a custom amongst my people to bathe every day. It keeps disease at bay." He paused and thought it over. Feudal societies tended to be steeped in religion. Though, from what he had discussed with Maester Luwin there were a number of faiths that held a strong hold in Westeros. Or perhaps the north did not hold religions in such high regard, due to the harshness of the life here. "I do not keep any faith. But some amongst my people do. The lady Catarina worships the C _hrist_ child, and the Lady Bheke follows _Oya_ , the goddess of war." They nodded, though he could tell they were confused.

He had no wish to explain the intricacies of twenty sixth century religion. With the birth of the Pan-African union in the twenty second century, the rise of neo-ancestor worship and the fall of the abrahamic religions on earth, and the rise of those strange proto-religions that happened during the great rush when the belt was first being populated. "Later." He said. "If you wish I will explain later. Tonight I will be at the sup. Ask me then." Tyliai felt no inclination to have dinner with the starks tonight, so there would likely be no way for the boy to ask. All the better, in his opinion. He looked back up, the sun had risen, streaks of hot white and icey blue licked at a slate grey sky. He'd missed the sunrise, and besides he had to meet with Maester Luwin.

He turned from the little lording's and walked back to his clothes. He slid the white long sleeved shirt over his body, and activated its built in environmental controls. It dried on his skin, and he stretched his muscles in preparation for a long run. He was three or so miles from Winterfell, and at full sprint would be there in a few minutes. He felt his legs tense, took a deep breath, and ran.

He arrived at Winterfell with one last great leap, clearing half a dozen meters with one massive stride. He walked back to the gate at an even steady pace. He breathing was calm, and he could feel his heart starting to settle back into its normal slow, steady pace in his chest. He could not fight the grin that was on his face now. Running always made him feel powerful, strong, and untouchable. Not the same rush he felt in battle, but something close, or close enough.

The walls of Winterfell were slate grey in his vision, but beyond them he could see the red and purple hues of bodies walking about, eating, moving, shitting, and fucking. Living. He moved through the Hunters Gate, as he did so he heard the howls of the dogs kept in the kennels. Everyone would know he had arrived. Maester Luwin would be waiting. He normally arrived at first dawn, but the little lords had interrupted his bath this morning. He moved past the guest house, and walked to the Library Tower. Though calling the stone building that stood at only a few meters tall a library was an exaggeration. He climbed the stone steps three or four at a time, and in a few moments he was pushing the wood door aside.

Maester Luwin met him with a small smile, and honey sweetened tea. He was a grey man, with grey hair and grey eyes. The oldest looking person Tyliai had ever seen in person, and he had known men well into their second century. But the old man always had soft words when he visited, and was always willing to learn as well as to teach. He smiled back.

"I apologize for my lateness Maester Luwin." The old man laughed. It was raspy, and hoarse. A sad sound coming from someone so passionate. The man seemed to be dying, slowly, from some respiratory illness or another. Perhaps if he spoke to Catarina...but that was for a later day.

"Truly, it's a gift to be young. Few men call the crack of dawn late. Lord Tyliai. But then again, few men are giants from the stars." He laughed another raspy, sickly laugh. "Come, come." The old Maester motioned for him to sit, he did though like always the great oaken chair creaked and groaned at the excess of his weight. "What were we on the day before?.." It was a rhetorical question, the old man might be frail and weak but his mind was still surprisingly sharp. It was doubly impressive for he had no augments to increase his memory recall. He played along, for the old man's sake. "A history of the seven kingdoms, and the strange institution that is the governing body of my people."

The old man took a sip of his tea and nodded. "Yes, yes. It was about seven hundred years before the conquest that Karlon Stark would defeat Darren Bolton and gain complete dominance of the north. The histories are unclear mind you, but it was said that Karlon Stark killed all the suns of the Darren Bolton, and married his daughters off to various lords of the day. All except one boy, a babe at arms still weaning on his mother's teat. To be sure that Darren would sire no more children, Karlon took Darrens manhood and cast it to the flames before the man's very eyes." He paused to take a sip of his tea.

"Two hundred years later, the Iron born would come down from the Iron isles, with their reapers. In their great ships they would land on the costs, and pillage, and take salt wives and gold and food only to return to their rocky islands. By six hundred and thirty years before the conquest they held the coasts from Old Town to where Greywater Watch is today at the neck. They would reach deep, deep into the river lands. Casting chaos as they went, raping and killing along the coast. It is said that for two generations the Iron Born held the twins, and a Greyjoy ruled as a lord. Though the Frey's would deny any such accusation." The old Maester stopped to catch his breath and take a few more racking cough. "There are not enough books on the histories from then to the conquest, and I am sadly not so well read on those." He took another of his tea.

"Tell me, My Lord. What of your people? You've thought me a lot this past month, the study of number goes far deeper than I ever imagined. So does the study of stars. And even the study of alchemy, or _chemistry_ as you call it. Many other things your people take for granted, my people have pondered for centuries. I've sent a few letters to the Citadel, and my brothers are eager to learn more." He paused and seemed to be rallying himself for something.

"Yet you have skirted the issue of your own past every time I have brought it up. Surely-" Tyliai sighed and interrupted before the old man could finish. The giant took a moment to take a slow sip of his tea. It was mildly sweet, just barely enough honey mixed within it to keep it from being bitter. Honey was a luxury here. Sugar didn't exist, he wasn't even sure if the plant existed in any form on this world, or corn, and these people were generations away from gene spliced yeast producing glucose as a byproduct.

"Yes." He paused to take another drink of the mostly bitter tea. "To begin we must start with the end. You understand? We, my people, as a whole I mean, have kept records of our history for over five thousand years. For the past seven centuries or so, we have kept records from highborn men and low. There is much to understand, and as such it is hard to explain." The old man sat in silence, waiting for him to continue.

"We must begin with the Union. The title you see, the _Sol Union_ is the union of all the worlds beneath the bright shine of our sun. A direct translation from our own tongue to ours would be the union beneath the sun. It is a trio of three major powers." He paused to think. How to explain. How to explain the intricate history of the union. The bush fire wars of the late twentieth century, the oil crisis of the twenty first. The expansion in the twenty second, the rise of the August Ones in the twenty third? And exactly how to explain the August Ones at all. "We have no kings, or rulers, instead we have councils of great men, each a master of knowledge in various fields that advises the three great machines that lead each of the great powers."

"Machines?" That had sparked the old man's attention. He seemed fascinated by all the machines, the more complex, the more magical seeming to him, the startled and pleased he was to learn of its existence.

"Great machines," he continued. "Many times larger than even the craft we used to arrive on this world. So large are they, they could be seen like the moon in the night sky. Three there are, each placed in equal distance from one another amongst the worlds of my people. It was them, these great machines that brought together the fractured peoples of my world and formed _Sol Union._ We call them the _Three August Ones_." He stopped to think of a proper translation. "The three glorious ones." He didn't have to words to describe the proper phrases or their true meaning. The citizenship contracts, the algorithms that predicted economic flow and traffic, the research centers spearheaded by impossibly intelligent A.I. minds. Humanity was a diverging species in the Sol Union. Fifty billion humans, fifty one billion sentients if you included A.I.'s. Forty eight billion with spliced genes, or augments to make them taller, stronger, faster, smarter. Better able to survive.

He was a shining example of those advances, so was Bheke and Dem. But they were legal in the sol Union, and he'd been allowed to live only by the pushing of his closest friends. Made legal by collusion and promises and just barely missing a death sentence by the mere nature of his existence.

He spent the rest of the day trying to explain the political system and history to the old Maester, though it was obvious that the man was simply not understanding. The complex union of political ties and ruling elected bodies. The balance between the inner systems worlds, the belters, and the outer system worlds.

The idea of a social contract between the governed and the governing was strange, the idea of it being an actual contract of citizenship was even more foreign. Though he understood the words, Tyliai could tell Maester Luwin was not understanding the meaning, the impact. The tea grew cold and unpleasant, and so Tyliai let it be. Soon, yet not quite soon enough, the sun had marched its way across the day sky and was returning to its resting place beyond the horizon. He felt hunger kneading at him, and the grumble of his belly was obvious.

"Would you take the sup with us today Lord Tyliai?" Maester Luwin asked. The old man had asked the same question at the same time every day since Tyliai had been asked to stay here by Demetrius. Normally he took his meal in his room and went over messages received. Looked through reports and made comments and suggestions for Dem. Wrote his own reports through the implant interface, but today...

He would eat with them today. Theon had been right. He had been less the courteous to turn down the sup invitations with the Starks. Though he often excused himself each morning he could tell Lord Stark's Lady Wife was starting to take umbrage to his reluctance to share a meal with them. He'd have to make up for that some way, perhaps...She had liked his guitar playing, and her children as well. He'd play for them after the meal, then excuse himself back to his room,

"Yes." The old man smiled broadly. "Allow me to get my instrument Maester Luwin, I would like to play after the meal."

"I heard you played your first night here. The serving women tell it was a beautiful sound. Yet, I've sadly had no chance to hear it." Had he the ability he would have blushed. But instead he smiled, and nodded. The walk back to the guest quarters was brisk. The sun was setting and as such torches were being lit along the courtyard of the castle. The guesthouse was a few short yards from the tower and he covered it in great half steps half leaps. When he entered the grey stone building he walked past lanterns hanging on the wall, and moved to the room that was his. It was large, perhaps the largest bedroom he had ever seen. In it was a great bed, once more the biggest he had ever seen made of goose feathers and covered in pelts of various animals. Unlike the rest of most of Winterfell, this room was lit by too square L.E.D's attached to their roofs.

He moved past the bed and to the metal latch trunk next to it. He opened it, and pulled a pair of what he considered proper attire. Long black pants, loose cut, and hanging low enough to cover just the barest hints of his synth-leather boots. He took the white shirt off, and rather switched to a loose fitting short, light grey short sleeved shirt. On its front, emblazoned in gold and orange against a field of black was the symbol of the Sol Union, the Twin bodies of the sun and Jupiter in orbit around one another. He grabbed the guitar, an acoustic piece made of mahogany died pitch black. The strings were nylon and glistened against the natural edges of its neck. He stood, and nodded to himself, then played a few notes along its body. A few songs, and he'd be free to go back to his room. At least he hoped so.

-Jon-

The great hall shone like daylight. The flameless lanterns had been placed about, paced evenly between each one so as to spread the light about the room. Each morning his lord father ordered a serving woman to place them outside to get the sun's light as the star-men had directed, and each morning the Lady Catelyn bid a guard to watch over them. At evening fall she would bid them placed back in the great hall, and the sup would be had.

On his first few moments on seeing the lights they had been a wonder. Now more than two fortnights later they did little to rise any such notions in his heart. The Star-men had appeared as if by magic, falling from the stars themselves amid a ship of steel and fire. He had met them for a few days, for a few moments, and then as suddenly as they had appeared they had returned to their hold north of Winterfell. Where the mountains and the edges of the Wolf Woods met. He had thought that by leaving one of their own here he would be able to gain more knowledge of them. But their pale giant Lord seemed skilled in moving unnoticed, despite his size. He made no noise when moving, and was far swifter than Jon had ever seen any man or horse run.

It had been by chance that Theon had seen him leave, and by chance that Robb knew of the stream. They had ventured there hoping to find him. On horseback they had rode, for five miles they had pushed the horses hard and -for the sake of secrecy- they walked the last part of the journey. They had seen his great form in the river, diving beneath the waters and returning to the surface despite the chill in the air. It was not quite dawn, and the air was brisk and cold, and yet there he was. A pale giant of a man, slicing through the streams waters as if born to the sea and not the land. He seemed neither bothered by the chill of the stream- for Robb had said the stream was fed by mountains higher North, beyond the Wolfs Wood- or by the nakedness of his form.

He had hoped they could learn more of the man, and Robb had hoped they could learn more of the fair maid. The lady they called Catarina, of auburn hair and pale skin. Though why Robb bothered Jon did not ask, or ponder. The woman was beautiful, all the Star-Men's women were beautiful, but Robb no doubt had little hope with her. She was a beauty even amongst a race of beauties and no doubt had a fair number of suitors. Handsomer, larger, stronger suitors who knew her customs and were not boys barely the age of twelve.

He had hoped to speak to the man, yet he had learned nothing. All because of Theon. Idiotic Theon. Stupid, careless, Theon who did not know when to keep his mouth shut. Who would not believe a word either he or Robb had spoken to him. Foolish Theon who had insulted a guest of Winterfell. If father found out...

"Hello Lady Stark, Lord Stark." The voice was quiet and soft, bell-like yet unmistakable. It was the pale giant. Lord Tyliai of the Sol Union. His great beard hung low, a curly thing pale and odd shade of white that made his age hard to tell. His blind eyes scanned the room with clear intent, and he smiled when looking at Jon, as if the man could see his blush of shame.

"My Lord." Lady Catelyn called. "It is a pleasure to sup with you, it's been some time has it not?" She smiled, and Jon had to hold back a scowl. It was unnecessary to insult the man as such, he was a stranger here and would not know the customs of the people of the north, let alone the rules of noble lords and ladies of the realm as a whole. His father raised an eyebrow at his lady wife, and her smile faltered.

"I apologize my Lady if I caused offense." He paused, and his great faced turned to face her. "Even amongst my own people, most find me...disconcerting. They find my size off putting, and my eyes disturbing. And they tell me the sight of me eating...well... " The way he had spoke made it seem as if he was an invalid. Yet he was a lord amongst his own people, a man of station and worth? Or was he. If his people truly needed him would they have left him at Winterfell? Had perhaps the other tall man, left him here as some insult. And if it was an insult to whom had he meant to insult, the Starks or the pale giant?

The pale giant continued speaking despite Jon's considerations. "As such I often prefer the company of myself." His soft voice seemed so earnest. "I truly apologize if I caused offense my lady stark." He pulled a chair out to himself. The wood groaned under the heft of his massive form. The look that bloomed on the Lady's face was one of light embarrassment. For a few moments the conversation lulled. They waited for the serving women the lay out the meal. When they were done, they started to eat. Jon watched the giant man, and was startled to see most of his meal already gone.

The meal was mutton, honey roasted over a flame and flavored with garlic and a heavy dose of salt. It was good, far better than they normally ate. The great giant though was eating as if his life depended on it, he left the grilled carrots alone, and the bread untouched. But the great heaping's of meat on his plate was almost gone, and when he opened his mouth to stuff more of the meat inside Jon saw that the man's mouth was filled with _odd_ teeth. He realized he'd never seen the man smile a full faced grin, and he understood why. His teeth reminded Jon more of a wolf's or perhaps that of a bear. The first few were normal, but beyond that they were all sharp, like jagged knives, great fangs in the back of his mouth. He ate bones and all, his great jaw working to grind away the flesh, gristle, and bone in his mouth.

As if sensing eyes on him, the pale giants clouded unseeing eyes turned to them. He slowed his eating, and looked away. He did not flush in embarrassment, but the obvious slowing of his pace, the sudden halt to his eating made it clear he was uncomfortable with their gazes. "I...I, apologize if the way I eat is...rude." Jon looked away, he himself feeling embarrassed for the man's own plight.

"No, Lord Tyliai, it was simply starling, we've never shared a meal with you before." His lord father's words were spoken, softly kindly. There was a few moments pause, and the man was eating again, great bites that cracked bones as he chewed. When he was finished with the meats, he turned to the carrots, and bread. Those he ate slower, and it was as he was doing that did Jon turn his own attention back to his meal. He ate his own mutton. It was good, sweet and salty and thick with hearty taste of lamb flesh. The carrots were sweet, firm as he bit into them. The bread was good as well, baked with honey, and glazed with it after it had come fresh from the oven. It was a rich meal, thick and hearty. The giant had finished long before anyone else at the table, and sat in silence. It was Arya who broke the silence that had settled.

"Where did you get those scars?" Her eyes seemed to shine, and her childlike innocence made the rude question all the more glaring for what it was. Even he was tempted to scold her, but the look Lady Catelyn gave her was more than enough. Yet the girl, in much was her way, gave no mind to the look and asked another question. "And how can you see when your blind?"

"Arya." He heard the lady of house stark snap.

The pale giant seemed confused for a moment, then surprised. Then he did something she had not thought was possible for him to do at such a question he laughed. Like his voice it was bell like, soft and like chimes ringing in the wind. When he spoke, it was it was strange. Such a childlike voice had no right being so serious so solum. He had started to play his strange instrument as he spoke. Sweet note once more filled the halls...

"I shall do the best I can to explain it in a manner such that you can understand." He had brought one of the metal cups his people carried with them. He took a sip from it, and Jon realized he had never seen the man drink anything but whatever it was in that metal cup. He never touched the wine, or the water, or the beer. Not even, Jon realized, the tea, only from that silver canister did he drink. "Amongst my people, a man decided to make warriors. Great soldiers of skills based upon warriors of old. He took many children, boys still babes in arms and sought to train them to be killers." He paused for a moment, then continued. "He used the medicines and skills of the great healers of my people to accomplish this. Great medicines to make a man stronger, faster, smarter, better, medicines meant for men, and not boys, and worse yet not babes at arms. I was one of them. The medicines made me as I am today, tall, and pale." He tapped a finger to the side of his head. "And blind."

He paused for a moment and shoved the carrots into this mouth. All of them in one great swallow. "He took these children and placed them in the depths of a great floating mountain, in the blackness between the stars. It was there that I spent my boyhood. For a while all I knew was me, and my ten brothers. I knew their faces as well as I knew my own, I knew their names and voices, and they were more parts of myself than other people. Like the fingers on my hand." He wiggled his six digits and it elicited a light laugh from Arya. "We were note parts whole then men, or boys, in and of ourselves. Fighting troupe's bred to kill. Life for us was a hard, cruel thing." He smiled. While he was speaking he had unclasped his strange instrument and six fingers danced across the face of it. The notes were sad, slow and high as if a song bird of spring was singing its melody.

"If we wished to eat, to sleep, to use the privy, we had to crawl through the tunnels carved through the mountains from one cave to another. We were allowed only a few hours of sleep each night, and for a trail of manhood..." He was quiet for a long moment. It was clear he had no wish to speak of it, and so the pale giant did not and moved on to other things.

"Each tunnel was made in such a way jagged rocks pierced the flesh and cut like knifes into our bodies. This man, he thought such things would make us hard, indifferent to pain, and in a way it did. That is where I got these scars." He paused. "Crawling through those tunnels. The rocks cut through our hands. Ripped the flesh away like razors." He sighed and seemed to be far, far, away. "How I lost my sight? That's a thing not to be told to young ears." He smiled down at Arya, thought the table for the most remained quiet. He plowed on through, either incapable of seeing the discomfort he had caused, or uncaring either way.

"That is also where I was given another form of sight. I do not see as you see, rather I see the heat of all living things, the fire of life in them. They took my sight in that place, and gave me this instead." He placed his fingers on his eyes and spread them. Jon watched in anticipation. Within the whites of his eyes, tucked beneath the lids, as if artfully drawn upon its surface were gold strands. Traced onto the surface of his eyes like a great tree, branching and splitting apart again and again. It was beautiful, it was horrifying.

He could see the heat of men's bodies, the fire within them, he said. No, he could see the heat of all living things, and that meant the dogs, and animals, and even the birds of the world. How far did such a sight extend? How piercing was his gaze, truly? He had seen them easily enough in the Wolfs Wood hidden amongst the trees as they were. So woods meant nothing to him, and likely thick fog meant nothing to him either. Could he see with his eyes closed? Could he see through walls? He wondered if the souls of men gave off heat, and if the pale giant could see that as well.

Was a bastard's soul any less than a true born sons? At the thought Jon blushed, and did his best to hide his face away. Thinking of such things were inappropriate, and likely a man such as Lord Tyliai would have the honor to dishonor his host as such. Though if no one thought the bring the issue up, neither would Jon. He wondered, though, could Commander Jason see his soul? If so what did the strange man see? He would have to ask him the next they spoke. Yet he had no idea when that would occur once more.

Jon stood from the table, his meal half unfinished. "I beg your leave." His Lord father nodded and Jon snow left the table. This...this would take some consideration...

-Mari-

Her golden eyes burned with Belter anger. She looked at the data, checked the expected results, scowled and cursed. "Fuck your mother. Piece of shit data isn't even consistent." She hadn't realized she'd slipped into the mishmash of languages that was Belter. She ran the simulations again, compared them to the expected outcome once more and scowled. She should be able to figure this out. At least grasp the basic understanding of it. How had they ended up here?

They should all be dead, and they weren't and the fact that there were five hundred and four other people on the ship who seemed to be taking that for granted grated on her nerves almost as much as the fact she couldn't work out how they were still alive. She ran a hired simulation, waited the few moments for Quay to crunch the number and cursed.

"Quay!" She called. _Fuck this._

The A.I.'s tilted voice responded immediately. "Yes, Dr. McLaren?"

"The fuck is going on with the sims you're running?" She paused to hit the console, as if hitting the A.I. in person. "If I was getting the same data each time then I'd know I was in the right direction, or where to look. But the data is different each time, are you malf-ing on me Quay?"

"No, Dr. McLaren. I am not at this time experiencing any malfunctions. The data you're getting is based upon what we understood of our own universal subatomic structural models and theories. However we are, for all intents and purposes, within another universe. You must take both factors into consideration. Your models for the previous universe are accurate, at least to our furthest understanding. I have been trying different models for different subatomic theories. I have been using the atomic collider to get further insights into this universe's underlying subatomic theory. The data there has been inconsistent, and my own theories change at an approximate two times per five minute interval. A base theory is being worked on. I approximate a total timespan of four years, six days, and fourteen hours before an accurate subatomic model will be in place for this universe, double the time span to the third power for a cross reference mathematical model."

"Really?" She was startled. Mari knew that the A.I. mind that ran the ship was a few dozen times smarter than her, at a minimum, but to be able to calculate how long before a solid complete base theorem model was worked out?

"No." The deadpan calmness of the voice made the word even more of an insult. Mari felt her rage start to boil. "That was a joke doctor McLaren. There are far too many variables to-" The urge to smash something was far too tempting. Instead Mari took one long deep breath. Then halted the A.I. mid speech.

"Stop." She breathed out. "Just...stop. That does not qualify as a joke Quay."

The A.I stopped for half a second, an eternity for a being such as it, and then it spoke again. In that same calm, pleasing voice it always used when speaking to her, it said, "I disagree Doctor. Given the subject matter, a falsehood far outside the realm of possibility would be-"

"Stop!" The A.I. mind would continue on that track for the next few hours if she let it. "Do you have any in ways into the underlying physical properties of this universe quaye, verbal summary if you do?"

"Of course I do Dr. Mclaren. The base principles and functionalities for chemistry, biology, and physics, all still apply. My very ability to function, and your continued ability to _even_ exist within the universe suggest base universal constants within ranges of those of our previous universe. Studies on my sensors suggest constants for theories of gravitational fields, atomic, and subatomic interactions. Though inconsistencies have arrived, and I have come to a likely cause of such inconsistencies that have been occurring within the experiments run and data collected. There is another universal force. One that had occurred within our own universe. More than likely at what would be this universal equivalent of quantum substrings."

"Another scientific force?" She stopped and turned back to the data to take a look through it. Quay interrupted by speaking though.

"'Force' Is a loose term . It's hard to define, but a close approximation would be an underlying variable both affecting, and not affecting all experimental data at the same time. It both exists and does not." Mari stopped, and stared. The data was being feed into the vid implants layered beneath her corneas. _That was interesting._

It took her a few hours to read through the first few gigs of data. Most of it was experimental data and references to previously cataloged data. It was in the midst of doing this that her private room bay slid open and she heard the soft voice of Catarina tinted with the touches of Martian offshoot Portuguese.

"Ame, please." Despite the words Catarina's voice was demanding, commanding even. It always was. The Martian like her, like every other department head aboard the _Grace of The Wind_ was trained to lead. "Leave this sad little metal shack and come. Follow. Let's go out an- "

"No." She called shortly. Mari decided it wasn't even worth the effort to turn about and give the declination in a face to face format. "No one else seems to be concerned about what happened to us. At least one person have to be, and if the Captain won't, or can't be that person than I shall be." As was her way Catarina pushed through, ignoring all protest to her plans.

"Come _ame_ , come. They have the synthstation running." She let the words drag for a long moment, and then she smiled. "Let's go." She spoke in the common Martian fashion, slow then fast, then slow speech. "No need for licenses now, being on a different plane of existence and all, and everybody had a few zettabytes worth of their favorite movies taken along with them. Someone got a copy of The Reckless and Mad, uncensored, original cut from right after the-"

"Really?" The Reckless and Mad was a love story, between a high level A.I. mind and an a-sexual half android woman on a quest to find the gene spliced genius of a little boy that had built the A.I. in the first place. It was more of a thriller than anything, fast paced scenes through the then unsettled belt, space battles that had more to do with high minded tactics than with any daring dog fights the 23rd century was known for. The original cut was special, in that it ended poorly for the heroes of the synth-vid. But, she still had the data to mine through, and quays suggestions of another physical force? Very interesting...

"No." She shook herself free of her red-headed friend's grip. "No, I'm sorry Catarina. I have to figure this out. I can't rest until-" Strong hands grabbed her again and pulled her from the room.

"I am the chief medical officer aboard the ship, and it is my diagnosis that you need a break. You've been in here a month."

"Catarina I do not have-" She was interrupted again.

"Quay, lock Dr. Mclaren out of all documents pertaining to her work for the next forty eight hours. It is my diagnosis that her workload is currently too stressful, and a full break from said, is necessary. Do you acknowledge?" No. No. She opened her mouth to protests.

"Quay don't you dare!" She cried out. But it was too late, in the lower left of her vision the data, and graphs she was looking at closed. The documents and reports Quay had written for her closed, then self-encrypted.

"I agree with Dr. Courta, Dr. McLaren. Biometric readings indicate high levels of stress." If she didn't know better Mari would claim the A.I. mind was pleased with the outcome. Almost smug. " You will regain access forty seven hours, fifty eight minutes from now." Catarina's superbly soft hands gripped her forearm and proceeded to drag her from her quarters.

-Catelyn-

It had been a moon's turn since the start of his stay. It was dawn, when the sun had barely risen into the sky and the roosters crowed their daily song that the noise came. The Godswood was silent as she moved through them. It was as she approached the walls of the glass garden near the north gate that she saw him, and it was after the sight of that pale giant that she heard the noise. It was a low thrum, strange and alien, like the roar of some beast, growling and twisting within a cage. For every moment she stood in stillness to listen to it, it seemed to get louder. Her eyes went back up to him. He wore dark trousers of his peoples make. His shirt was simple grey, yet still finely adorned was a strange crest. A gear, died a sharp vivid blue, with many smaller gears within its edifice.

He stood as still as a tree, unmoving above the high walls, his gaze far, far off. The noise got louder. Then he moved, so fast, that at first she had thought he had disappeared. It was half a heartbeat, had she blinked, no doubt she would have missed it. He leapt from the walls, and fell through the trees of the gods woods, she feared for his life. For the walls of the ramparts around Winterfell stood more than twenty feet in height. But with grace she had never seen before, he landed, his body rolling just as it hit the ground. He sprung up out of the roll in a heartbeat, and his smile was broad and white as he did so. Perfectly straight white teeth, were gleaming against bright pink gums.

"My lady. My people have sent messengers." She would always find his voice disconcerting, that bell-like child's voice coming from a man who dwarfed her like most men towered over their children. "They approach from the north gate, should we go greet them?"

The noise was getting louder. That low growl from seemingly forever away, getting louder and louder. Her eyes turned back to the walls, and looked back at him. A fall such as that could kill men, she'd seen smaller drops do so, and he seemed unfazed by it. She looked at the giant and his grey, milk eyes. She looked away, those eyes were far too disturbing to stare at for long periods of time. She had planned to visit the gardens and pluck fresh fruits for the morning meal, but...

If they had outriders approaching then it was her duty to greet them. "Yes, let's go."

He nodded and smiled again. "I shall meet you at the north gate my lady." To her astonishment he started to run towards the smaller wall that separate the Gods woods and the courtyard. He leapt, clearing the ten foot high wall in one jump, no doubt landing much as he had on the other side. She stared after him, and started her walk back towards the gated entrance. The great Iron Gate split open, the guards at the door moved and she walked forward. The noise grew louder, until it seemed as if some great beast was constantly screaming in pain. By the time she arrived at the front gates Ned stood there, with his bastard and Rob. The Greyjoy boy stood there as well, and the pale figure of Lord Tyliai stood like a sentinel next to him. The noise had grown, grating and terrible on her ears, foreign and strange, no longer like a distant growl, but a howling guttural scream magnified a thousand fold.

"My Lady." Her Lord Husband called. She curtsied, and replied in kind. "My lord."

The noise was now unbearable and she could see the source. Though what it was confounded her. The soft mud and grass flew away from it as it roared closer. It moved far, far, faster than any horse she had ever seen. The closest thing she had to compare it too, were the steel horseless carriages that the Star-Men had used too fortnights before when they had first come to Winterfell. Yet they rode on two wheels rather than four, and were squat with one rider on each mount. A few moments was all it took for them to arrive, and as they did so the strange devices slowed. The riders were armored, with full helms upon their faces. They wore leather greaves, with steel studs upon the knuckles. Guards for shins and elbows made of strange material, and even their clothes seemed more like thick leather plate than any true garment. The leathers were died a thick grey, and emblazoned in bright blue was the gear within the gear upon their shoulders.

Yet there were more oddities in their wear. The leather was filled with uncountable little holes, the gloves left gaps in were no proper grieves would. The full helm had a glass visor smoked so dark you could not see the face of the men behind them. They did something and the roaring of the machines stopped. Then a tiny little miracle happened, the visors collapsed and unfolded themselves from the heads of one of the men. Glass and steel folding upon itself life an oh so carefully folded letter.

She found it was not three men as she had thought but two men, and one rather tall women. The men were of Ned's height, if a little taller, but the women stood a head and more over him in height. She was pale specimen, as pale as milk, with hair so dark it seemed a mirror of the black spaces between the stars of the night. Her eyes were slate grey slabs, and worked to accent her pretty face. She was a fair maid, far from ugly, but not what one would call a great beauty. A nose a little too long, eyes slanted oddly, lips quite too thin, and being built more like a man than a woman kept that title away from her. Catelyn noticed along what she could see of the woman's neck were gold traces, a variant of the same design she'd witnessed within the eyes of the pale giant.

Her gaze traveled over all of Winterfell, and then landed on the great giant of a man. The pale woman smiled when she saw him, and perfectly white teeth gleamed back. He smiled too, then laughed.

"Lord Eddard, Lady Catelyn, I would like to present you my direct subordinate and a few members of my...guild." The pause took some time. "The beautiful maid is named Liu." The woman bowed, then spoke. Catelyn felt surprised, her accent was slanted and changed in a way quite different from the giants own. Her voice was quiet though, pleasant and smooth.

"It is an honor to meet you both." The woman shook her head. "No, it is more than an honor, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am Liu Huawei, _adjacent_ to..." She stopped and a small quirk of a smile played on her lips. "Lord Tyliai. I bring a message to you from Lord Vasquez to both the honorable rulers of Winterfell as well as my own lord." She stopped and looked around at the gathering crowd. Frowned then turned her attention back to them.

"May we speak in privacy?" The question was aimed at her, rather than Ned and Cat found herself startled by the imposition. She turned to her husband and he nodded. Cat turned back to the woman and smiled. "Yes. We can, please follow me."

She turned to her children to send them away. "Return to your morning duties." She told them, and with reluctance they slid away. Then the two of them, both her and Ned, walked to the library tower with the Star-Men in relative silence. Though she could hear what she thought was quite pleasantries being exchanged between the giant and the giantess? They spoke in their strange lilting tongue and she couldn't begin to hope to understand it. There a sharp gasp, then a light chortle and Catelyn turned back to glance at them once more. The man was behaving in a manner she had not yet seen of him before. He waved his arms, and though he word were quite it was quite obvious he was enthralled in a story or another. The woman and laughed along with him. He seemed in the gales of a tale or joke.

What exactly was an _adjutant?_ They seemed far more intimate than any proper man and woman should be.

The arrived at the library tower as she was contemplating such things. Maester Luwin opened the doors and had tea ready before they even entered. Tea was set on a small hard wood table, and wooden spoons stood next to a bowl of honey. Five chairs in total were set the table, one for each of them. The pale giant's was large, and sturdy, made of the thickest hardest wood they had and reinforced with iron. He sat in it and made it look like a toy.

Silence reigned for a few moments as they all settled. She stirred honey slowly into her tea, and watched as the new guest at Winterfell took a look about her. The silence lasted for a few moments then the woman spoke again.

"My Lords, I apologize for my unannounced intrusion. I come on behalf of my liege, Lord Vasquez." She paused and took a sip of the tea, though she made no note of it. "In three months' time my people hold a festival. A celebration of the end of the seasons, an acknowledgement of the transition from fall to winter. Upon our first world, the seasons would change many times a year, rather than one every few years as is common here. Our forefathers would celebrate this change, and wish for their gods to bring them through the winter safe. We still throw the celebration. A festival of sorts we call all hallows eve where we feast and drink."

The woman paused to take a drink of the tea. Catelyn paused to consider seasons changing multiple times a year. A winter that lasted months and not years. The notion was strange. She looked to Eddard, and he too seemed perplexed by it.

"Lord Vasquez wishes to throw the festival again, and invite the lords and ladies of the north to festival. So that our relation with our future neighbors might be better, we ask for Lord Eddard's aid." There was a short period of silence, a moment in which she could tell Eddard was taking the woman's words in whole.

"Missives would have to be sent by me. And outriders under my own banners would have to accompany whatever men you send." Her lord husband fell into a long silence as he finished her speaking, and she found her own voice picking up where it left off.

"A tourney." She said.

"A tourney?" The woman said. Her face morphed into a deep frown as she spoke. "Please, my Lady. Elaborate further." 

Cat found herself nodding. "A tourney, with a prize suitably large would draw even the most...unwilling, of lords and knights to your festival. A tourney with a great prize would spread the word throughout all of Westeros, even some of the southern lords would be drawn. It would announce to the world your presence." Catelyn paused to take a sip of her tea. In the light of the single flameless lantern she could clearly see the small wisps of steam rise from the cup.

"I don't think that's not particularly what Lord Vasquez wants." The pale woman's voice was quiet and calm. She took slow sips of her tea in between the pauses of her speech.

"No." The pale giant's voice came as a sudden shock. He'd been quiet for some time. "I know Dem. He is hardly a man to do things in half measures. A tourney it shall be. Tell me, Lady Stark, what would be a suitable prize for such a thing? Gold? Gems? Weapons or gifts. Whatever it would take to draw interest."

The woman picked up the speech as he fell back into silence. "And what does a tourney involve?"

She looked to Ned to speak, but he remained silent and from the look in his eye he intended to let her speak. She took a deep breath, and explained.

"Five thousand gold dragons would draw many a knight for any joust or melee. It's by far the highest prize for any tourney I've yet to attend. The archery competition is usually a price of one thousand gold dragons."

"Is gold all that would be accepted? What of gems? Or gifts of other sorts?" Catelyn frowned. Then nodded. Gems were not unheard of though, their worth often exceeded any prize given in gold.

"Diamonds and Sapphires have also been given as prizes before my lady...It is not unheard of. It is known that for his twentieth name day Jaehaerys I gave a prize of a diamond the size of a man's fist to the winner of the joust. A prize the Lannister's hold onto even to this day."

There was a long moment in of silence in which none of them spoke. "Then a prize of gems would be accepted?" The pale giantess spoke. She seemed quite intent on that piece of information.

"Yes." There was a look shared between the giant and the giantess. Then the giant nodded and spoke again. "We would like further aide in this my lady." He turned to Eddard. "My lord. We ask for your continued help with this?"

Eddard stared at the two of them then nodded. "Of course. Lord Vasquez is an honorable man, and this is a small thing."

"If that's it, then I shall return to my lord with your suggestions." The woman spoke as she stood, Cat found her height was almost preposterous. She stopped at the door. "Lord Stark, Lady Stark, Lord Vasquez invites you to sup with him on the third day of the next week. The..." She paused to think. "The horseless carriage he gave you can get you to the Star-Ship in an hours trip. He invites the entirety of your household, your young ward as well." She bowed to them, then left through the door.

-Demetrius-

He narrowed his eyes at the report and sighed. Of course this was coming, that it took a month and a half for someone to realize this was surprising. He would have figured it would have happened sooner. Most of the people on this ship had been chosen almost exclusively for their unaugmented intelligence, work ethic, and creative thinking. Being the smartest person in a room was hard, being one of the ten thousand smartest people out of a population of fifty billion was...harder. He laughed at his own internal joke, then turned his attention back to the report.

"Quay." He called out into his office. Shipboard he had coms access to the A.I. and her near infinite banks of cached knowledge. One hundred thousand Yottabytes of storage meant she had quite the bit of knowledge in her servers.

"Yes, Captain Vasquez?"

"Reference legal data to all contracts for all five hundred eighty four individuals on the ship excluding my own. Cross reference with case laws and give me suggestions. It would seem we are unlikely to complete a good portion of them." He paused to take a sip of his coffee. The brew was good, and likely worth his weight in gold now. Coffee wasn't just a world away, it was a universe away and the conditions to grow it likely wouldn't be found on this planet anytime soon, if ever. The bean, like chocolate, was delicate and could only grow in certain soil condition, in certain climate, at certain elevations.

He enjoyed it for now though, most of what he drank was his own private supply. Bought and stored using his carry on allowance. The ship's own supply was okay, but there was something about the natural stuff grown in what was left of the Amazon on earth that couldn't be matched to anything freeze dried.

"There are a total number of seven hundred thirty five incompletable clauses on our end in a calculated four hundred sixty eight contracts. Most have to do with land allowances in lieu of payment in exchange for services rendered aboard _The Grace of the Wind._ As we are on occupied and previously inhabited land such allowances are currently incompletable. Though, if you wish a campaign of conquest would be quite easy. I've run multiple simulations of-"

"No, quay. We are not conquistadors landing on the new world." His words dripped with scorn at those last two words.

The machines polite response was exactly what he expected. "I have taken your statement into account already. Still the simulations are quite interesting to run, and without the concerned effort of flying the ship anymore I find myself with a high number of free processing cycles." Dem found himself pausing mid sip. He blinked and stared at his desk.

"Are you...bored Quay?" The A.I. wasn't supposed to get bored. She wasn't designed too, and didn't have the proper architecture to self-learn and develop to the level where 'boredom' would something more than an abstract idea to her. Though who knew what was going on with the sub atomic structures that formed his quantum logic cores.

"I am not capable of getting bored Captain Vasquez, but as I stated I had a number of unoccupied processing cycles, and I am designed for self-initiative. Conquest of the native peoples has been calculated to be a relatively easy solution to a number of foreseeable problems. Direct conflict would not have to be initiated, and would be quite the waste of our finite resources. There are a number of common diseases within our genetic databases that can easily be modified for maximum fateaility and communicability." She paused in her smooth, synthetic speech, then continued. "It seems we've diverged from our original conversation Captain. I've summarized the various points of likely discontent with each individual contract. I've also apprised the approximate value of each point using the limited economic data provided by director Tyliai."

He blinked then smiled. She'd switched processing cycles. A.I. tended to do that, to follow one train of thought through, and suddenly shift to another without so much as a pause. "Thank you Quay." He'd need to read through each contract, and the psychiatric dossier on its related crew member. He was four hours into the task, writing down proposals for contract arbitrations.

"Captain Vasquez, the Starks are approaching via transport rover. ETA is fifteen minutes until their arrival." He paused, wrote notes on his the last of the contracts and stood up. "All of them? Even Lord Stark's illegitimate son? And the babe?" He doubted they'd bring the child, travel was hard in their world, and it was unstated fact that babes at arms stayed with their mothers or nursemaids, at whatever castle or holdfast there was until they were old enough to walk. He also doubted they'd bring their bastard son for fear of insulting him.

"No. Sensors indicate that there is no unusually young individuals aboard. Video confirmations with face matching software indicates that Lord Eddard's eldest child is indeed aboard the transport rover, though he travels with Director Tyliaia, in the aft portion rather than with his family at the back. It should be noted an unknown youth is also with them, noting reports from Lord Tyliai it is likely Lord Eddard's young ward."

"So eight then. Including lord Eddard and his lady wife." He'd been a little lenient on the food rations since landfall six weeks ago. They had freeze dried foods of course, and the meat bats and the algae farms, and the green house on level too. But anyone who'd had grown meat, and compared it to the natural stuff could tell you there was a difference. It was softer, too tender. Though, the men of Winterfell had never complained. He remembered eating his meal at Winterfell, and while it had tasted fine, edible if barely seasoned, it had also had a slight undercurrent of rot his sensitive tongue and nose had been all too keen to notice. No doubt the meat had been slaughtered recently...but how recently? Meat left in a cold room was still edible after a few days...but edible and tasty were two very different matters.

A thought struck him as he moved from his office. A solution to a possible his problem at hand he had yet to consider. Most of his issues lay in the form of valuation of assets in exchange for services rendered. Many of the people aboard the grace of the wind were experts in one field or another, or at least highly skilled in their own fields and a handful of others as well. They had given up job offers, positions of power, and in some cases their families in exchange for something else. A promise. Money and power for their children. Land promises, mining rights to surveyed planetary bodies, moons, and asteroids. They had joined the grace of the wind in exchange of a promise, not of wealth and prestige for themselves, but of a promise of wealth and prestige for their own children. Or their children's children.

He smiled. Of course, his idea would not appeal to all, but it would appeal to some, and the offer of gold in proportion to a salaried position should keep most of the others. No doubt there would be drift, a few years from now he'd be surprised if less than thirty percent of the shipboard crew hadn't drifted off somewhere. But it did have merit. He moved from his shipboard office to synth room he'd reserved for this dinner with Lord of Winterfell.

"The future looks like it'll be interesting for us quay." He called out to the A.I. as he shut the room behind him and walked home.

 **Authors Note: This is the end of the chapter. The section after this only tangentially relates to the story. Based on the responses I get I might scrap this story in favor for takeing it a whole nother direction, as well as writing a companion story to it. These are samples taken from those two story ideas.**

 **Rewrite of starfall: In short during the rewrite the story would start after Roberts rebellion, takeing a logical approach to how a space faring people would handle landing on planetos. From there the story starts and I have some interesting idea.**

He woke in zero gee. The pull of a world had left him, and in the tight confines of the cold sleep tank he felt gangly and uncoordinated. His limbs felt weak, and the glare of phosphorous leds above his head were bright spears of stabbing light in his corneas.

"Captain Vasquez, please be careful." Quay's voice was pleasant, almost bell like in its accent-less tonality. "Something has happened captain, and it is beyond the scope of my limited functionality to deal with the situation as it is." He couldn't focus on the A.I's voice. The lights were boring into his head.

"Wha…" He coughed his throat was dry, and though he knew the words Quay was saying, knowing them and understanding them was two different things. His thoughts were a foggy blur, as if every idea he had was at the bottom of a frozen lake and though the surface was there, just out of his reach and a thin membrane of fogged ice stopped his thoughts from breaching to the surface.

"Captain, the full scope of my self actualization protocols have been reached. I am no longer capable of making independent decisions. Your input is necessary. Stimulants to aid in the process of waking from cold sleep shall soon be administered. I apologize in advance for any discomfort."

Ice dripped into his veins. The fog cleared, the ice of his mind shattered and leapt away. He was whole, more than whole as his awareness of self slipped away. There was something to be said about the Z-3-D. The drug was a stimulant, and a suppressant. A neural inhibitor that attached itself to the complex stew of bio-organic chemicals that made consciousness, awareness of self, the I that is I, possible. All the while it mixed with naturally and gene-spliced occurring neural enhancements. A lightning storm raged in his mind, and he, the him that was Demetrius Vasquez, son of sol, _homo-sapien_ fell away.

 _Simia Cognitia_ took its place. Thinking ape, logical and cold. It was a fugue state, this lightning storm of thought processes that was occurring. He fell away, consciousness peeling like layers of an union. He was fading, fading, fading...

Gone. The self was gone. The self was a mass of grey matter floating in a fluid sack in a bone skull. Thought was all that was left, the barrier between the conscious and subconscious, the limiter that kept most of human thought in the deepest depths of the sea of the mind was gone. His thoughts blared. Then the implants, the neural enhancing drugs, the link to quay that blurred the line between his own mind and the A.I's activated all at one. The flesh was weak, the body aged and old from nearly nine decades of life and another of cold sleep had done nothing to ease the wait. His thoughts were a blazing sun, a raging storm of neural activity.

"Quay, report." The voice that came, he knew abstractly, was his. But at the same time it wasn't, rough and croaky, deep and unused for so long.

There was an error, A fluctuation in the manifold of manifolds. That seventh dimensional binding force that allowed all things in the lower dimensions to be. The very force they were using to drive the _Grace of the Wind_ forward at just a few percentages above the speed of light. They weren't dead...yet. But such things could change.

" _Wake the others_." Had he said that our thought it? He found it hard to figure that particular. His thoughts were scatter and focused at the same time, split along his multiple cores of thought, and then those thoughts hyper threaded. Ten years in cold sleep shipboard time, three since a malfunction and Quay had taken charge. The meat suite was a hundred now, ten decades, barely mid-way through its own life at this point. Quay ghosted his thoughts again, a logic core latched on, and he knew. Three sol nominal stars within a spherical diameter of twelve light years to the ship. Probes had been sent out, and only two had responded back. One had not yet reached its target and it would be another five years before a response would be had.

One held no plants in the habitable zone, though it had massive gas giants and three mineral rich moons just outside that. A field of rocky diatribe just outside the giant's orbit ten times larger than the asteroid belt. That was not a terrible existence, not a new earth, surely, not the world they'd been looking for. But most of the men and the women on the ship had grown up in the rocky conclaves of the asteroids habitats of the Belt, or the Oort cloud.

But it was the last one that interested him, an earth like world four planets from the sun, barely in the habitable zone. Quay ghosted though his thoughts, and probe readings focused like a sharp knife. He looked at it and paused. He checked his own vitals, they were nominal, well within normal range for someone fresh from cold sleep. The drug slurry pumping through his veins made his neural activity like a radial supercell of celestial gases condensing to form a star. A mass of slamming particles bounding together until a critical mass was met, and something incredible happened.

So his vitals were fine, his thinking capability was fine. The data when compared to the multiple readings was consistent. But what it was telling him...The realization hadn't occurred to him before, but the drugs had yet to have fully kicked in. Now they had, and he was thinking like a non linear being. Like the A.I. or the Aug's or the Multicores. Quay fed the data to him through the drip feed interface that was the neural jack in the back of his neck.

The ship worked by using Zenith colliders to smash heavy neutron atoms, most of them artificially created, at near light speed into each other. Then massive eddies of electrical current was passed through superconductors to create artificial magnetic fields that then bent the trajectory of the resulting atomic material around the shit. The subatomic particles that spun around the ship created a radial orb that pushed the ship not through space itself, but along it, parallel to it along the fourth dimension.

"Quay.' He thought or said, or perhaps both all at once. "Wake the division heads and have them prepped for a meeting. Stim use is authorized for all by Ty.

That massive field had failed and something had happened. The sensors readout indicated that the gravitational forces that had occurred when the fields...fluctuated, should have killed them. Crushed them into subatomic nothing ness. There was nothing he knew off that could survive condensing into a singularity. Yet here they were. More so, here that world was. Earth like and so close, it was so improbable to as be impossible.

The effects of the cold sleep drug were mostly gone now, but the weak pallor of his muscles made moving hard. The flesh suite had atrophied from misuse so when he attempted to move it, he found he could not. Ten years in cold sleep had done him ill.

"Please be careful..." Quays voice ghosted through his auditory nerves. He frowned.

"Wake them and link us into a coms call. Visual and auditory feed once they come around. We likely won't be doing this face to face. I think Ty's the only one who'd be able to move if this has me down." Or Behke, he thought. But then again who knew what she had going on under her skin. The Pan-African Union was very good at biological engineering, one of the best with their only known competitors being the Oort Conscilary.

It would be some time yet, before the rest of them woke up.

-Eddard-

Jory Cassel had spotted it. They were taking the king's road, heading back north with Jon towards winterfell. The skies were dark and grey, and the world seemed to be as dour as his mood. They said that ice ran through the veins of the Starks of winterfell, that going south they would melt and fade away. When he had went to the Vale there had been five starks in winterfell, now there were two with the name, and one without. Four starks had gone south of the neck, three had note come back. He was deep in his thoughts when Jory approached. His horse was a pale mare, a big courser strong and swift, with brown spots about her mane. Brown of eyes and hair, a strong jaw and a nose flattened in his younger years from a tavern brawl. His eyes were wide with fear as he approached and eddard had stared, concerned for the man.

"There's something in the woods milord."

He kept his pace, and glanced back at Wylla. The maid held Jon in her hands, the babe carefully wrapped to ward it against the chill spring winds that blew harshly in the north. He frowned, robbers and thieves on the kings road. No doubt sellswords and the like from the war for the real. He had ten men with him, all veterans and sworn to his service. But were they enough to protect Wyla and the babe? In truth he had no wish to test it.

"How many men?" He said in a whisper. He kept his head forward, though he found himself swaying his eyes left and right, doing its best to spot the men Jory had spotted.

"No...milord. Not men...Something."

Eddard watch Jory pause, and halt in his speech."Go on then, tell me. What you saw." His own words were lightly whispered. Again he glanced back the Wylla and the babe at her arms.

"Tell me." Jory nodded, and turned his eyes back towards the wood.

"A wraith my lord, or something of its ilk. I saw it in the woods. Amongst the tree and grasses, a thing m'lord. It..." He stopped again and turned back to the woods. "No." He took a deep breath. "Not men. It was big, bigger than a courser half and again, on long legs, like a spider." He stopped and started to speak again. "Its melts against the trees, but I saw it m'lord. I saw it. It makes its flesh like the trunks of the trees, brown and green. At first I thought me eyes were playing me false. But I saw it. Again and again. I saw it, it stays away, but it drifts closer and when it does I see it." Eddard stared at the man, then turned back to the the woods.

He had no wish to call the man a liar, and he knew Jory was not a man of falsehoods, of fools motleys. Yet, what he was saying sounded so much like that. Then he saw it, a glimpse, the barest hints of a wrongness around the edges of a tree, where the brush of the forest floor and its trunk met. It was as if one was looking at a wavering image in a still pool, it was almost real, almost perfect, yet marred at the edges. Then the wrongness was gone, yet, he had seen it though. It had been there, of that he was sure. He looked at Jory and frowned.

"How long have you seen it?"

"For the past twenty miles m'lord. At least since yesterday's journey. At first i thought...well. You saw it?"

Eddard found himself nodding his head. His eyes casting back to the trees. He'd seen something in there, something strange, not of the woods of the north. Or at least, he hoped not. "I saw it."

"A day m'lord. At least we stopped at moat Cailin for supplies. A day since I was sure my eyes weren't playing me false, and likely a few days before I noticed it." His horse, a brown-black beast, with eyes a light shade of brown walked on without his heed. It knew the way, and would be able to lead him to white harbor half blind in the worst of winters.

He took in Jory's words as they moved. They could draw it out, whatever it was, he had teen good strong northern men. All skilled with blades, and all veterans from Robert's Rebellion. Yet...would Wylla and the babe survive whatever battle was to come? The horses from Moat Calin were thin beasts, lean and hard, for had they been heavier beasts they would have sunk in the muck of the Neck. They were swift beasts too, outrunning even the fiercest of Coursers by a half and again.

"Have three men stand watch tonight." He paused and turned his eyes once more back to the woods. "No flames for tonight's camp as well. No need to tell it where we are."

"Aye m'lord. I'll have Harald and Gren stand watch with me tonight." Eddard found himself agreeing to Jory's words. Harald and Gren were good men, stalwart and decent with blades for men called to arms. THey would do well with Jory on tonight's guard. "Let them know," Jory nodded, and slowed his horse to speak with the men. He watched as their eyes also turned to the scanning, and anxious. In turn each man was told, and in turn all ten turned their eyes to the woods. Scanning, and just glimpsing...it. Whatever it was.

That night he had trouble sleeping, and he found himself looking about as they made camp. It was slow work, and the worry in the men's faces made the tedium of the task greater than it should have been. His sleep was restless, and he oft woke in the night to listen to the trees. The howling of owls, and the croaking of night creatures. He found it a both a blessing and a curse. For the memory of Lyanna's death ran through his dreams again and again. But even awake the worry of that thing, that wraith that stalked woods took hold where the memories of sister would not.

The morning came not soon enough, and all was well. They packed their things, moved camp, and headed once more towards White Harbor. But as they moved, as the woods and swamps of Moat Calin passed, he found himself seeing the thing more and more. It was in his vision almost always, a wavering thing that, now that he knew how to look, was always there. Just at the edges of his vision, though gone as soon as he looked directly at it. The sun rose and fell, and their journey slowed as all the men grew visibly nervous at the thing in the woods. It either grew bolder, or dumber, or cared less for their knowledge of it.

Three days they spent like that, the men nervous, though holding their tongue so as not to scare the nursemaid. Despite that he could see the stress on her face, the false smiles and polite words hiding the fear in her eyes. She either knew, or suspected they were hiding something from her. As they walked the paths through the dwindling trees of the neck, past the thin lines of web moss dripping and wet from the morning dew he spotted it. A thing, a wraith larger than any horse that slithered and moved, almost gliding amongst the tree trunks. There was a week's journey yet before the arrival at white harbor. He had no knowledge if it would follow them into the city, but he wouldn't chance it. Another watch set tonight, and on the morn, he'd send those men and Wylla away with the babe. Then he and the others would face it. Better they confront it and kill it, then allow it to stalk through the woods preying on the weak.

That night, his sleep was restless. Lyanna haunted his dreams. Pale as milk, her dark hair splayed about her in such a way it seemed a crown of the strangers making. As his sister lay in her bed of blood her eyes watched him, endless black pools that stared at him and judged. Her lips moved, yet, despite this, he could hear no sounds. But he needed no sounds to know the words she was speaking.

"Promise me." She had said. "Promise me, Ned." And so her lips moved, and he heard her words without hearing.

 **The title for this one is kinda undecided: This one im thinking of calling rocketman, in this another spacecraft lands, but the man who lands is one person. He was a "small ship" he's a smuggler, a lair, and a theif. He's not a good person, but he wants to rich and sucessful. After realizing he's trapped on planetos for the rest of his life, he aligns himself with the starks in order to move out and forge his own fortune.**

He was in jail. He was in jail, and this time it wasn't quite his fault. For not the first time that day Yuri Leson taught over the events that had led him here. He'd been running for the Dead Brotherhood, a simple smuggling run. Some Letseian spice from alliance space into Delphi, a watery world that danced the thin line of the goldilocks zone around a sun not quite like Sol's. It should have been a simple job, a two day six jum trip and a slow burn in system on low power em drives at sub light speeds. A quick meetup on an asteroid on the outer rings of Delphi's gas world, a planet called Apollo, and then a quick hop out of system and clean alliance credits deposited into his account.

A simple job. It should have been a simple job, but now he was staring at the hulking form of a massive man who called himself, of all things, Torque. He wanted to laugh, and would have the first time he'd heard the name if the man before him wasn't well. Fuck-all huge was a good word to describe him.

"Look here, _little man_ ," Torque was like most of humanity nowadays, a mix of everything and more. Dark bronze skin, sea green eyes, and light blond hair. Like almost everybody in Hegemony space nowadays he was obviously auged, and gene spliced, and probably drugged up to boot. He stood closer to nine feet than anyone had any right being, and his arms and legs were like the ancient tree trunks on the forest world of Daphni. "I don't care what the fuck those shits said in the alliance, in hegemony space the only true law is power. In here I'm that law. I'm that power. I am the hegemon here. "

 _A simple job,_ he found himself thinking. And now he'd have to worry about being...accosted by this war machine of a man in an hegemony jail. On a backwater so far out it didn't even have proper ftl data transfer bueyos. When he found Arax Delalay he'd push the man into the burning plasma of a fusion core himself.

"Of course..." He found himself saying. An Alliance citizen was by definition _not_ a Hegemony citizen, and by virtue had no rights. The enforcers that had intercepted his ship could have simply spaced him and taken his goods. It's what he'd expected when he'd arrived at the homing beacon only to find himself suddenly surrounded by Hegemony enforcer ships.

"Though..." He should really shut up. He knew whatever smart quip he was about to say wouldn't be worth the trouble. But really...what kind of dumb ass name was Torque? "I have to ask, did you give yourself that name? Or did your poor, unfortunate, whore, of mother give you that name?"

The punch was like being slammed in the chest with the base of a Solid State rifle. It broke a rib and he collapsed on the floor. The subsequent kick broke too more. Distantly he felt the motion of someone picking his head up, and then the world went black.


End file.
